Think Fast

A week ago, Governor Inslee announced a second round of restrictions on gatherings. While it's not as severe as the set of restrictions that went into place earlier in the year, it has upended things somewhat. The last time I was at Costco, they were inexplicably sold out of Spam, of all things. I've given up on attempting to make sense of people's reactions. A lot of it, I would guess, comes from the surprise of it all. But, really, none of this should have been a surprise.

Not in the sense that people should have been expecting the Governor to stand up and make an executive order last week, but in the sense that this shouldn't have been a sudden executive order. Washington had established a phased reopening plan, with the idea that counties could move between phases as they were ready or as needed. And it was understood that infections would rise as fall and winter came on; there's a clear precedent for this, it's called "Flu Season."

So I'm not clear on why the state couldn't have published numbers well in advance laying out what they expected the numbers of SARS-2 CoV infections to look like, simply based on the seasons, and what excess over or under that would put a county into any given phase of being open. Then, as the numbers ticked up and projections were made, people and businesses alike could have made plans. The knowledge that increased closures would result in panic buying would have allowed retailers to lay in more stock, and the worrywarts could have gotten started on their retail therapy sooner.

I understand that the situation with the Coronavirus is supposed to be completely without precedent and sui generis, but it's basically just an infection respiratory disease. Sure, it's more random than a lot of other ones, but that doesn't mean that the response needs to feel random, too.