Sara Robinson from FB
11 March 2020
America is so damned lucky that C19 landed in Seattle first.
Our leaders were the first ones in the country to tell seniors and the compromised to stay at home.
They were the first ones to close a college campus, cancel a big national convention, and shut down sports arenas and theaters.
This week, they will be the first ones to use the unemployment insurance system to keep families with sick members afloat.
They told the insurance companies, flat out, that yes: you ARE covering all C19-related costs. No deductibles, no back talk.
They’re now taking the lead in making sure that businesses and the poor also have what they need to get through.
Meanwhile, on the medical side, the folks at Fred Hutch pioneered the use of genetic mapping to track the virus’s spread.
The University of Washington didn’t wait for the CDC; it made its own tests early on, which is why we’re testing more people than any other state.
At Kaiser, they’ve got the world’s first vaccine in clinical trials starting this week.
The Gates Foundation has kicked in $100 million for research, and will have a home test you can order online available sometime next week.
And I was at UW hospital today, which is preparing for a deluge of cases that’s expected to hit in about another nine days. They’re cancelling elective surgeries, training staff, preparing wards. And the PA I saw mentioned that their pharmacy is inventing its own hand sanitizer formula, to ensure that they’ll have a continuous supply no matter what.
This is what competent leadership looks like. We are not waiting for the CDC or the Trump administration to do the research, set the policy, provide the tests, develop the vaccines, or call for quarantines. Our leadership is determined to stay out front of it, and bring the rest of us along.
It’s what all of us, not just those of us in a rich blue technology capital, deserve. To get the full horrifying picture of what the GOP’s policies have stolen from Americans, and the kind of competence and trustworthy leadership we all need to fight to get back to, look to Seattle. At this point, every hour is providing new examples of what a real government looks like, and what it can be mobilized to do.