It was deja vu for Washingtonians who flocked to grocery and department stores to buy – everything – with looming COVID restrictions announced on Sunday. Even before Jay Inslee made his 11 AM announcement, lines stretched for more than a block outside Costcos throughout the state. Untrue rumors that grocery stores would be ordered to shut down drove dazed residents into a buying frenzy. Once again, toilet paper and paper towels appeared to be the critical supplies needed to survive a pandemic.
On Sunday, restrictions announced would require all retail stores to limit their capacity to 25%, including grocery stores. Even in the hardest-hit regions of the world, a government shutdown of grocery stores has not happened. Government officials and industry experts appealed to people not to panic-buy, stating the supply chain was strong. Shoppers found empty isles across the state, with some shouting and pushing matches over paper products reported at some stores.
Washington is earthquake country, and residents should have a 7 to 14 day supply of required goods on hand at all times. Emergency preparedness experts chimed in, stating that properly prepared homes would not have to buy any goods to prepare for potential disruptions if they have a good earthquake plan already in place.
Update: 12:05 PM – the announced restrictions will be in place for four weeks.
Governor Inslee of Washington state will be holding a press conference at 11 AM to announce new restrictions on activities and businesses due to a dramatic increase in COVID cases. The sweeping restrictions will prohibit indoor dining, reduce capacity at all retail locations including grocery stores to 25%, and requires entertainment venues such as movie theaters and zoos to close.
Washington state has seen a record number of new cases, exceeding 2,000 a day, while hospitalizations have started to increase. Late last week, UW Medicine announced it was implementing its surge plan which includes adding hospital beds and staff while dialing back on elective surgeries and in-office visits.
Government officials in Idaho have made things more complicated for Washington state. While Idaho does not havee a mask requirement, the hospitals in the panhandle region have become overwhelmed, and the state has started sending its COVID patients to Seattle and Portland, Oregon. In eastern Washington and Clark County in southwestern Washington, positive test rates range from 10.4% in Clark County to 37.7% in Whitman County. Less than 5% positive is ideal, and anything over 10% indicates under-testing and widespread transmission. Anything over 20% is considered a critical situation.
The state of Washington has released the following statement.
In order to slow the spread of rapidly increasing COVID cases in our state, and ensure that hospitals and medical systems are not overwhelmed, we are taking the very difficult but necessary steps to protect public health.
We recognize this will cause financial hardship for many businesses and the governor and staff are exploring ways to mitigate the impacts.
These rules are effective Monday, Nov. 16th at midnight (12:01 AM Tuesday), except for where noted as in the case of restaurants (detailed below).
If the activity is not listed, it should follow its current guidance. All K-12/higher education and childcare are exempt from the new restrictions and will follow current guidance. These restrictions do not apply to courts and court-related proceedings.
Indoor social gatherings with people from outside your household are prohibited.
Outdoor social gatherings should be limited to 5 people from outside your household.
Restaurants and bars are closed for indoor service. Outdoor dining and to-go service are permitted. Outdoor dining must follow the outdoor dining restriction. Table size limited to 5 for outdoor dining. These restaurant restrictions go into effect at 12:01 AM Wednesday, November 18.
Fitness facilities and gyms are closed for indoor operations. Outdoor fitness classes may still occur but they are limited by the outdoor gathering restriction listed above. Drop off childcare closed.
Bowling Centers are closed for indoor service.
Miscellaneous Venues: All retail activities and business meetings are prohibited. Only professional training and testing that cannot be performed remotely is allowed. Occupancy in each meeting room is limited to 25% or 100 people, whichever is fewer.
Movie Theaters are closed for indoor service. Drive-in movie theaters are still permitted and must follow the current drive-in movie theater guidance.
Museums/Zoos/Aquariums are closed for indoor service.
Real Estate open houses are prohibited.
Wedding and Funeral receptions are prohibited. Ceremonies are limited to no more than 30 people.
In-store retail limited to 25% indoor occupancy and must close any common/congregate non-food-related seating areas. Food court indoor seating is closed.
Religious services limited to 25% indoor occupancy no more than 200 people, whichever is fewer. No choir, band, or ensemble shall perform during the service. Soloists are permitted to perform. Facial coverings must be worn at all times by congregation members and no congregational singing.
Professional Services are required to mandate that employees work from home when possible, and to close offices to the public. If they remain open, occupancy is restricted to 25%.
Personal services are limited to 25% of maximum occupancy.
Long-term Care Facilities outdoor visits only. Exceptions can be made for essential support person and end-of-life care.
Youth (school and non-school) and adult sporting activities are limited to outdoor-only for intrateam practices, masks required for athletes.
A household is defined as the individuals residing in the same domicile.
UW Medicine announced they are implementing surge plans due to a dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases in Washington state. In a publicly available memo, UW Medicine indicated that the rapidly growing cases are starting to impact the patient load within the hospital system.
Part of the surge plan includes increasing resources in its Emergency Operations Center to support the increase of bed capacity, staffing, and supplies. The memo goes on to hint that there will be a reduction in in-office visits and a shift to more telemedicine appointments to balance patient and healthcare provider safety.
Additionally, although no specific information was provided, prioritization of surgical procedures will be evaluated. The memo went on to indicate that emergency and critical surgeries would continue.
Governor Jay Inslee will address Washingtonians at 5:30 PM as the numbers for COVID-19 infections in the state of Washington accelerate. According to the Washington Department of Health, COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased 22% from November 3 to November 9, the most recent data available. Additionally, the rate of newly diagnosed cases, a gauge on how quickly COVID-19 is spreading, is near the highest levels recorded for the state, 145.2 per 100K.
Hospital capacity statewide remains positive, but the number of COVID patients is increasing, as well as those critically ill. ICU availability also remains. Idaho has been sending their sickest patients to Western Washington, with the state outstripping their hospital capacity. Idaho does not have a mandatory mask requirement and officials in the panhandle, where the infections are the worst, recently lifted pubic health restrictions.
Rural counties and counties where mask compliance is lower, or outright resisted is seeing some of the worst numbers. Positive test rates in Whitman County are 37.3%, Adams County 22.1%, Spokane County12.4%.and Clark County along the Oregon border is 10.4%.
This is a breaking news story and we will provide more information as it becomes available.
Sprawling across Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, the 173,000 member Navajo Nation suffers from “Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19” – COVID-19. Over seven-percent of the Navajo have tested positive for COVID-19, with 591 deaths. If the Navajo Nation was an independent country, the mortality rate of 4.7% would be third-worst globally, behind Iran and Mexico.
Tribal officials called the outbreak out of control this week. In this sprawling desert region, where one-third of the population has no access to running water, officials declared a 56-hour curfew in an attempt to curb case growth. The curfew is on top of an existing daily curfew from 9 PM to 5 AM.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been working with the Navajo and Pueblo Nations since April. In neighboring New Mexico, almost 50% of all COVID-19 deaths are Indigenous peoples who make up 10% of the state population. Reservations across the United States have reported a complete lack of support from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal government, and state officials. In Washington state a request for PPE from the federal government resulted in the shipment of body bags.
In South Dakota, where governor Kirsti Noem, R, has refused to have a mask mandate and permitted events such as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, Cheyenne River Sioux, and Oglala Sioux tribes established COVID-19 checkpoints to enter their reservations. Governor Noem sued in federal court to remove the checkpoints, but the courts supported tribal autonomy, and the checkpoints have persisted. Tribal leaders in South Dakota stated they had established the checkpoints to protect tribal members due to a lack of medical resources and PPE.
Inequality isn’t limited to Indigenous peoples. The respected medical journal The Lancet published a study on July 14, 2020, comparing the Bronx Montefiore Health System’s mortality rate before and after COVID-19. The study included over 505,000 patients in the system and concluded that the mortality rate of Blacks due to COVID was higher. Factors such as age and comorbidities could not explain the higher rate in the population.
Closer to home in Washington state, six percent of all COVID deaths are Black while making up four percent of the people. For Hispanics, the numbers are far worse, with 38% of state fatalities coming from the ethnic group, which makes up 13% of the population. COVID tore through Yakima County earlier this year, where state farmers fought against guidelines to protect farmworkers from the disease. County leaders took a strong anti-mask position, and the county sheriff refused to enforce regulations. When it was time for the early summer harvest in the agricultural county, officials had to fly patients to Seattle, Portland, and Spokane to relieve overloaded hospitals.
APM Research Labs has been compiling mortality statistics based on race for COVID since March, and it paints a grim picture. Only Asian Americans have a lower mortality rate for Coronavirus. For Black Americans, the mortality rate is double for whites. Despite the higher infection and mortality rates, the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that minorities as a group were less likely to be tested for COVID-19, be sicker when tested, and require more treatment due to the delay in identifying patients. The study also stated about Black households, “they are more likely to be working in low-income jobs that cannot be done from home, to be living in larger households in densely populated areas, and to utilize public or shared modes of transportation.“
With the United States setting national and world records for the most positive tests in a day three days last week, the disparity is only getting worse. The IHME estimates that as many as 400,000 Americans could be dead from COVID by February 1, 2021, without drastic steps taken to lower infection rates. Back in Navajo County, Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 may have impacted the national election. According to the Navajo Times, members of the nation voted in record numbers in Arizona, with 97% of the tribe voting for Joe Biden.
I am writing to you today to thank you for the last three-years-and-one-hundred-and-forty-seven-days of your presidency. When you were elected, you promised you would unite the American people together uttering the words, “When America is united, America is totally [sic] unstoppable.” So here we are, Mr. President, three years and 147 days later. I’m so proud as an American to see you have fulfilled your promise to unite us.
Through your divisive words and actions, good Americans from sea to shining sea are uniting. Your great words about Charlottesville, where you declared there were “very fine people, on both sides,” and you were pleading to not rush to judgment. In contrast, how quickly you condemned protesters in Minneapolis without wanting to learn more. Yes, Mr. President, you are uniting the country.
As you tightened the rules of legal immigration in the name of defending America, you placed asylum seekers and those seeking the light of freedom into the textbook definition of concentration camps. They shivered in the cold, unwashed, lacking medical treatment, a place to sleep, and even basic shelter in some cases. They died of preventable diseases, documented beatings and rapes by guards, and murdered at border crossings.
Peoples of the world, trying to escape the specter of violence, government abuses, and crushing poverty, had their children taken from them and placed in inhumane conditions. The same children were misplaced in government bureaucracy and malfeasance while their parents were deported. Yes, Mr. President, thank you for uniting us. The same children remain packed in unfit conditions, exposed to abuse, negligence, and COVID-19.
Your attacks on the free press in words and deeds have made the United States one of the most dangerous places on the planet for reporters and photographers. When faced with overwhelming evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia murdered a reporter from an American newspaper, you only gave it passing mention. Today as I write this, the news agencies that once supported you have grown weary, and cracks are forming. When confronted with their concerns, with their realization that no amount of spin can put you in a favorable light, you attack what was once your allies. Yes, Mr. President, you are uniting us with your actions.
You promised to bring dignity back to the White House and to be the hardest working President in history. For three years and 147 days, we’ve watched you use Twitter for diplomacy, spend your days watching TV, playing golf at taxpayer’s expense, and when faced with a crisis from your beloved people right outside your door, cower in fear in your basement bunker. Yes, Mr. President, you are uniting us.
You promised to control the deficit, balance the budget, and drain the swamp. Yet during a period of economic prosperity that you inherited, your tax cuts didn’t benefit 90% of Americans, enriched the top 10%, and grew our nation’s deficit by 5.2 trillion dollars in just three years 147 days. A debt that our children and our children’s children will inherit with inflation and lost prosperity. Our economy entered recession before the first COVID-19 death was reported on our shores, and you could count the active cases on one hand. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
Your authoritative and awe-inspiring words found within each of your Twitter broadsides vilified our friends and allies. You insulted our closest neighbors and most significant trading partners in Canada and Mexico. You have brought us to the brink of a cold war with China, left the dictatorial government of North Korea laughing at us, encouraged the Russian state, and left the globe wondering what has happened to American greatness. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
You claimed that the government has no place in regulating business. So you gutted environmental and wildlife protection, while placing tariffs, also know as price controls, on goods and services. The prices of those goods and services hurt businesses and ordinary Americans alike, removing any benefit from your tax cuts, and not coming close to filling the deficit hole as you promised. The farmers, coal miners, and factory workers you promised to help have been abandoned while foreign nations scammed you for tax breaks.
Your incredible response to the COVID-19 epidemic has exposed to the world that the disease ravaging our nation is not just a virus, but the impotent reaction from your leadership. Emergency rooms became overwhelmed, front-line medical workers died due to a lack of personal protection equipment, your agencies scammed by predatory companies and junk science, and our leaders in science and medicine silenced. One-hundred-and-fifteen-thousand dead Americans from what you declared was a hoax, was just the flu, would magically go away once warmer weather came. As I type this, the southern and southwestern states are being devastated by your hoax. Your playbook of distraction and Twitter diplomacy didn’t work against a virus. The world has learned that we are nothing but a paper tiger, with fragile infrastructure and resources.
Despite all of these missteps toward greatness, your support hasn’t wavered. Your staunchest allies and enablers have stood by you while trying to steer your course. Yet you continue to ignore the Constitution, jurists, leaders, scientists, doctors, and diplomats that have been attempting to save you from yourself. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
As our nation watched in horror at the street execution of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street, his life squeezed from him as he cried out for his mother, the people became united. You went to your same playbook to divide, vilify, and tweet. As the people you profess to love unprecedently protested outside your door, you built a wall, you hid in a bunker and watched the TV you deny you watch. You threatened to send federal troops against your People, to the disgust and disdain of retired and active-duty generals and admirals. You had peaceful protesters pepper-sprayed and beaten for a photo op at a church. As you spoke of law and order from the White House, a house built by slaves, the nation could hear your state-sanctioned violence against the First Amendment in the background. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
I want to thank you, President Trump, for the last three years and 147 days. Because of you, your words, and your deeds, I was able to see the hatred and racism that existed right under my nose. I could see what I thought were friends, for what they are. By encouraging the forces that want to destroy this nation, you exposed the great lie that there is equality in the eyes of the law, that the police forces of this nation have just a few bad apples, and make rare, but very public mistakes. I always suspected these were narratives were false, but you provided the proof.
You have united the American people, Mr. President, in a way that I never thought would be possible three years and 147 days ago. We are joined in historic protest from coast to coast and border to border—six-hundred-and-fifty cities and towns across America, from the biggest to the smallest. From marches measured in the hundreds of thousands to lone vigils of one. All these people, united against the hatred, the fear, and the anger you’ve fomented tweet after hateful tweet. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
We are united to no longer accept the idea that racism has been resolved in this country, or is just a passing problem. Because of you, the good people of this county who didn’t think these were real issues are now learning that it is deeply rooted in the very things you defend, and rotten to the core.
We see you for what you are, a dotard, barely able to stand on their own, obsessed with what people think of you. A narcissist, staring at their magic mirror, listening only to those who say yes. Outside your bunker, a giant has awoken and been filled with a great resolve to bring about change to our nation. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
I have watched first hand since May 30 as Black, white, Latino/Latina, Asian, Hispanic, indigenous, native-born, and immigrant have marched in peaceful protest. I have seen first hand the excessive force applied by our militarized police departments using CS and OC gas on peaceful citizens, firing rubber bullets, striking with batons, shocking with Tasers, and preventing peaceful assembly. My eyes have stung, my lungs have burned, and I have personally carried the wounded as I documented the actions you sanctioned.
The violence was so great that our allies in the United Kingdom have voted to stop selling rubber bullets and teargas to the United States. Violence on the people so troubling that even in South Africa, they are marching for the Black lives in our raging and grieving nation. Yes, Mr. President, South Africa looks more enlightened in the eyes of the world than our country because of your words and deeds.
We are once again the United States of America, Mr. President. We are united against you and those who think like you. We are joined together to bring out meaningful change, for full equality, to demand that this nation treat everyone as equals. Equality does not mean that some will get less, nor is that what We the People want. We want the level playing field the American dream promises for all people. We want our minority brothers and sisters in this great race of life to run that race unshackled, unencumbered, and without the oppression of institutional racism. Mr. President, those of us that want this change outnumber those of you who don’t.
You and your supporters are focused on agitators and those who are trying to discredit this movement. I applaud that, Mr. President, because distraction is useful when you are bringing about change. While you shudder in anger watching your TV and spitting out sentence fragments on Twitter, we are using the most potent weapons we have in the American arsenal. We are leveraging our rights. We are using our right to peaceful assembly. We are using our right to freedom of speech. We are using our right to videotape and photograph, and audio record the transgressions of those who are so comfortable with racism and inaction, that they feel they can freely operate in this connected world with impunity. And, Mr. President, we are sharing those videos, pictures, and audio clips, on Twitter for the world to see. We are using your actions to demand change at a local, county, and state level and, on November 3, at the federal level too.
Had you told me, Mr. President, that you would unite our nation in a singular fierce voice demanding change in just three years and 147 days, I would have said it was impossible. I had expected incompetence and hatred, but I never realized how dark your heart is, how you lack a soul, and how deep corruption runs to your core. You made these things mainstream and revealed the ugliness of America hiding in plain sight behind gossamer curtains. Those curtains, Mr. President, have been torn down.
On November 3, 2020, the American people will decide on whether they want to renew The Donald Trump Show for four more seasons. Forty-million unemployed, the numbers without health insurance exploding, institutional racism and violence defended by you, the Constitution defiled, 115,000 dead from COVID-19 and counting, and protests in 650 cities from coast-to-coast.
Thank you, Mr. President, for uniting us and putting America, for the first time in more than a generation, on a path to greatness. We, the people, are screaming in a singular voice, “no more.”
Three-years, and 147 days.
Journalists, activists, and researchers defending the First Amendment
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