From Crosscut: With an uncertain holiday season nearly upon us, dangerous pandemic trends in King County and throughout the state — coupled with no new health restrictions or state financial support to those most vulnerable to the spread of disease — could make celebrating in any capacity especially risky this year.
COVID-19 positivity rates* in King County are surpassing case highs seen in the spring. The number of daily reported positive COVID-19 cases has trended upwards in King County since late September, and since the end of October those rates have doubled. According to Dr. Jeff Duchin, health officer with Public Health — Seattle & King County, hospitalization rates in King County rose 30% over the past week.
In a chilling and familiar summary, Duchin says, “COVID-19 is a viral wildfire, and we are the fuel.”
With the surge showing no sign of slowing down, local epidemiologists and medical professionals are now declaring that the third wave of the pandemic has arrived, following a first wave in the spring and a second in the summer.
Health officers don’t make game-day decisions when weighing whether to reverse course on “reopening” Washington counties to business, socializing, and other aspects of daily life — that’s up to Gov. Jay Inslee. In a televised address on Thursday, Inslee encouraged Washingtonians to rethink their holiday plans. The governor has not yet reintroduced mandatory restrictions on social gatherings, although further measures to reduce the spread of the virus are expected to be announced over the next few days. Health officials are hoping that Washingtonians will voluntarily comply with social distancing directives and not gather with others whom they don’t already live with.
At a press conference Tuesday, Inslee’s chief of staff, David Postman, said, the governor “doesn’t have some secret plan in his pocket. This is the plan.”
“We know that holidays create problems,” Postman said. “Thanksgiving, Christmas, those are the holidays where people pack their houses full of people. That can’t happen this year.”
On Friday morning, Inslee tiptoed toward enforcing that, issuing a request to anyone entering the state to voluntarily quarantine for 14 days, while asking locals to (also voluntarily) stay local.
The trend is pronounced enough that Washington medical experts and officials from across the state, including Public Health’s Duchin, issued requests for pandemic vigilance with an underlying message of this being their final request before more restrictions are put in place.
“We’re at a point that if we cannot change the current trajectory of disease by changing our behaviors, we’ll need to take actions that will hurt our economy, and no one wants to do that again,” says Dr. Kathy Lofy of the Washington Department of Health.