Questions unasked. Statements and predictions taken at face value. Vague data, ambiguities, and contradictions unaddressed.

Whatever happened to “Question Authority”?

Jefferson County Public Health Officer Dr. Thomas Locke has a huge responsibility and huge powers due to the Governor’s declaration of emergency.

Sure, it is up to the Board of Health to formally approve his recommendations. The Board of County Commissioners has the final vote, as well. But practically speaking, Dr. Thomas Locke, an unelected bureaucrat, is The Decider. His decides whose job is “high” or “low value,” whether it is “high” or “low risk,” and, whether some families should see their breadwinner lose her job or whether a small business will be pushed closer to failure because he does not want them to reopen.

What if he’s wrong?

One thing we’ve noticed from watching the virtual meetings: nobody asks him any hard questions. No, “But doctor, what about….” or “What you told us last week seems to have changed. Did you miss something?”

Considering how important is his every word for the fate and fortunes of thousands of people, and the fact he is, after all, unelected, the public deserves at least a few hard questions. Because, you know, he could just be wrong.

So, since our “electeds” and our “appointeds” can’t seem to ask any substantive questions, we will.

TOURISTS ARE GOING TO KILL US ALL

“Dr. Locke, what about Kitsap County?”

“What do you mean, what about Kitsap County?”

“And Thurston and Chelan, doctor?“

Dr. Locke has repeatedly said we cannot risk attracting tourists out of fear they will bring contagion that Jefferson County has avoided. We’ve had only 30 COVID diagnoses and no deaths.

His “early open” list excludes all businesses he believes could attract tourists. That is a lot of businesses. It includes all retail that is not already somehow fitted into the arbitrary “essential” category. He also wants to prohibit many businesses from serving all but “locals.” A business that must stay closed may be selling the same kinds of things as an “essential,” but because Dr. Locke thinks the closed businesses, but not the open businesses, will draw tourists like fruit flies to overripe melon, they have to continue to slide towards going out of business permanently.

But Kitsap County. But Thurston, but Chelan.

These counties are right next door to King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties, which account for the majority of COVID diagnoses and deaths. Tens of thousands of people go back and forth between all these counties every day. Commuters cross on ferries or head to work on I-5. On weekends, Seattlites have been heading east into Chelan County since the beginning of the lock down.

These counties already experience far more interaction than Jefferson County would by fully reopening, especially with all our major tourist events cancelled for the rest of the year. The sheer numbers of daily county-border-crossers swamps the numbers of day tourists we could expect to wander Water Street or take in Fort Worden’s beach on a sunny day.

Neither Kitsap, Thurston nor Chelan county has seen any spike in COVID diagnoses or deaths.

Kitsap County has 270,000 people with a mere 159 cases, most of which were resolved without medical intervention, as is the case everywhere.  That gives it an incidence of .06%, lower than Jefferson County’s infection rate of .09%. Only one COVID related death, that of a very elderly woman with debilitating health issues, occurred in Kitsap County. (The death of a police officer, charged by the media to the coronavirus, has not definitely been connected to COVID).

Thurston County, with 288,000 people has seen only 123 cases and 1 death, a man in his 80s, about whom we know nothing else. That gives Thurston County a COVID incidence of only .04%, again less than ours.

Chelan County, with a population of 78,000, has seen a higher incidence with its 176 cases, or .22%, but that is a very small rate. It may be due to the fact that Wenatchee serves as a regional medical center and cases and deaths from other counties have been credited to Chelan County when patients are brought there. Still, as a regional medical hub, Chelan County reports only 6 deaths.

The experience of these counties does not support Dr. Locke’s scary tourist scenario. Besides, tourists have been visiting us the whole time they were supposed to be locked inside their Seattle apartments. They have been on Water Street, at our parks, stopping off for food, gas and supplies on their way west.

“Doctor, if we truly want to insulate ourselves, shouldn’t we prohibit our own residents from going to Seattle? Why worry about tourists when we’ve got our own folks wandering off the rez?”

Ignored in all of Dr. Locke’s presentations to the Board of Health, is the fact that Jefferson County residents in significant numbers have been going back and forth from Snohomish, King and Pierce counties during the lock down. While waiting for the Bainbridge ferry, I struck up a conversation with the man in a pickup behind me.  A Port Townsend resident, he has regularly been traveling to Seattle on business and meeting with clients there, and getting his meals and doing a little shopping in town when he could.  In front of me two men driving a delivery truck for a Port Hadlock business were making another regular run to customers in Seattle. I overheard another person in line, also from Port Townsend, on her phone telling someone she’d missed the earlier ferry and would be there as soon as she could and where to meet her outside the airport terminal. I was heading into Seattle that day for medical care, as scores of other Jefferson County residents have done over the past two months.

And Jefferson County residents for the past two months by the hundreds, maybe thousands, have been travelling out of county to shop in Big Box stores.

The prophylaxis around Jefferson County has never been impermeable. And just like Kitsap, Chelan and Thurston counties we haven’t been walloped by the Wuhan virus.

A few more counties to mention.

Across the Columbia River from Portland and its populous suburbs lie Wakiakum and Skamania counties. They are fully in Phase 2 of the Governor’s reopen plan, with no restrictions on who may come to their county and enter their stores and businesses. Wakiakum has only 4 diagnoses, no deaths. Skamania has 3 cases, no deaths. Further east, it has been reported that on the first weekend after several rural counties there entered Phase 2 they were inundated with people from Spokane taking advantage of the good weather to enjoy parks, hiking trails, boating and fishing. Columbia County still has only 3 cases, no deaths. Garfield right next door and a stone’s throw from Spokane, has yet to report a single COVID diagnosis.

RECKLESSLY CONDEMNING “RECKLESS” REOPENINGS

Dr. Locke has criticized Georgia for opening so fully and so quickly. He called that governor’s actions “reckless.”

Yet, Georgia is seeing hospitalizations drop. Its per capita death rate is a fraction of New York’s. More than a month into its “reckless” early open Georgia continues to turn the corner for the better. And its economy is picking up steam, its people are returning to work, Atlanta’s airport is getting busy, its hospitals are making money again instead of bleeding red ink.

Dr. Locke did not throw Florida, tourist mecca supreme, into his “reckless” category. They also opened a month ago. The media has dropped their “human sacrifice” hair-on-fire reporting as Florida is doing just fine and its Governor now regularly blasts the unfounded, reckless precictions of doom fired at him when he announced reopening beaches and just about everything else.

And there is Colorado, led by a Democratic Governor, where cooped up Denver residents fled to the mountains as soon as their stay-at-home chains were broken. They’re doing just fine.

South Dakota never closed at all–“recklessly,” no doubt–and has never experienced any of the nightmarish predictions lobbed its way.

More states opened robustly and very early in comparison to Washington. On today’s CNN’s “State of the Union,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said there has not been a spike in cases in reopened states.  Rather, the notable increases have occurred in states that remain locked down, though, thankfully, in “closed, very localized situations.” 

QUESTION AUTHORITY–SOMEONE, ANYONE, PLEASE!

So, yeah, maybe Dr. Locke has some things very wrong. Maybe his fears are overblown and unfounded and Jefferson County’s economy is paying the price and we’d do better to just open everything up now and stop the destruction. There is certainly a lot to contradict his alarmism about tourists, in data from near and far.