One size doesn't fit all

I am a numbers guy – always have been. In my early childhood, I dreamed of either being a famous singer or a writer, but my voice changed from an alto to bull frog baritone about the same time as I realized I had no spelling gene. My sisters had it, but to my dismay, I inherited my Grandfather’s inability to spell. To offset my spelling deficiency, Dad enrolled me in all the math courses our school offered. I continued to explore the quantitative sciences through graduate school. Even with an adequate academic background, I find it impossible to make sense of the numbers pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic.

Could confusion be contagious? If so, I seem to have contracted it from the experts. Recall back in February when Dr Fauci and the CDC announced that the outbreak in China would have little if any impact on America? When the virus was found to be spreading in a nursing home near Seattle, they changed their prediction and declared two million Americans would die from the disease. That got my attention. The prediction was soon modified, however, and by mid-March the estimated fatalities was down to 90,000. By the first of April, it was 60,000. Oddly, this is almost the exact number that die in America each year from the annual flu. The World Health Organization did no better. They also downplayed the global effect of COVID 19 then declared it to be a global pandemic. At first, they recommended masks only for those who tested positive for the virus. A couple weeks later, they decided everyone should wear masks, as some people may be carriers but free from symptoms. Over night the paranoia ramped up, and the world began to look like a hazmat decontamination zone.

With the aid of computers equipped with spell check, I am able to maintain written contact with pen pals around the world. One is a doctor in the Amazon jungle of Peru. She has yet to have any patients test positive, but everyone there is locked down and terrified. The whole planet is terrified. I went to the grocery store the other day and felt like I was trying to crash the gate at Chernobyl. The reception crew had masks, gloves, and head coverings. They were disinfecting all incoming carts and giving customers a once over. All this in a county that has had only one confirmed case of the virus.

The pandemic is not spread evenly. Sweden is one of the few countries that decided not to lock down, and their rate of infection is less severe than many countries with absolute stay-at-home orders. Here in the US, the average is one case of virus for every 437 citizens. It is more severe in New York despite strict no travel orders enforced by local police. The governor of Nebraska, on the other hand, elected to continue with business as normal as possible, but only one in every 1118 have had the virus. Why do residents of Seattle test positive more than six times those who live in Portland? Residents of Eastern Washington are much less likely to catch the Coronavirus than those in King County. The epidemic is different for each locale, and the response should be different as well.

The national response makes sense in places like New York where the sickness is of truly epidemic proportions. State mandates makes sense in the Seattle Tacoma area, but are overly restrictive east of the Cascades. Our President warned a month ago that the cure may be worse than the disease. This has proven to be true in those areas where the danger is low. The virus has shown to erupt in pockets, but the impact on the economy is spread evenly. The pandemic has put twenty-six million Americans out of work. The loss of life due to COVID19 is terrible, but the loss of our economy is devastating and getting worse. There is no reason that Eastern Washington can’t go back to work.

(Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.)