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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSeattle's Leaders Let Scientists Take the Lead. New York's Did Not
The initial coronavirus outbreaks on the East and West Coasts emerged at roughly the same time. But the danger was communicated very differently.
By Charles Duhigg
April 26, 2020
The first diagnosis of the coronavirus in the United States occurred in mid-January, in a Seattle suburb not far from the hospital where Dr. Francis Riedo, an infectious-disease specialist, works. When he heard the patients detailsa thirty-five-year-old man had walked into an urgent-care clinic with a cough and a slight fever, and told doctors that hed just returned from Wuhan, ChinaRiedo said to himself, Its begun.
For more than a week, Riedo had been e-mailing with a group of colleagues who included Seattles top doctor for public health and Washington States senior health officer, as well as hundreds of epidemiologists from around the country; many of them, like Riedo, had trained at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, in a program known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Alumni of the E.I.S. are considered Americas shock troops in combatting disease outbreaks. The program has more than three thousand graduates, and many now work in state and local governments across the country. Its kind of like a secret society, but for saving people, Riedo told me. If you have a question, or need to understand the local politics somewhere, or need a hand during an outbreakif you reach out to the E.I.S. network, theyll drop everything to help.
Riedo is the medical director for infectious disease at EvergreenHealth, a hospital in Kirkland, just east of Seattle. Upon learning of the first domestic diagnosis, he told his stafffrom emergency-room nurses to receptioniststhat, from then on, everything they said was just as important as what they did. One of the E.I.S.s core principles is that a pandemic is a communications emergency as much as a medical crisis. Members of the public entering the hospital, Riedo told his staff, must be asked if they had travelled out of the country; if someone had respiratory trouble, staff needed to collect as much information as possible about the patients recent interactions with other people, including where they had taken place. You never know, Riedo explained, which chance encounter will shape a catastrophe. There are so many terrifying possibilities in a pandemic; information brings relief.
A national shortage of diagnostic kits for the new coronavirus meant that only people who had recently visited China were eligible for testing. Even as EvergreenHealths beds began filling with cases of flulike symptomsincluding a patient from Life Care, a nursing home two miles awaythe hospitals doctors were unable to test them for the new disease, because none of the sufferers had been to China or been in contact with anyone who had. For nearly a month, as the hospitals patients complained of aches, fevers, and breathing problemsand exhibited symptoms associated with covid-19, such as glassy patches in X-rays of their lungsnone of them were evaluated for the disease. Riedo wanted to start warning people that evidence of an outbreak was growing, but he had only suspicions, not facts.
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Wawannabe
(5,641 posts)This hasnt been reported here. I live in Kirkland. Never heard of this guy.
Thanks for posting.
crickets
(25,960 posts)It explains a lot about what is and isn't going on with the CDC right now. It shows just how powerful early social distancing can be, how different community dynamics and local politics can skew a situation where no overarching policy is mandated, and how much we are paying with our lives because of one sociopathic narcissist.
nitpicker
(7,153 posts)(snip)
Its also true, however, that the cities leaders acted and communicated very differently in the early stages of the pandemic. Seattles leaders moved fast to persuade people to stay home and follow the scientists advice; New Yorks leaders, despite having a highly esteemed public-health department, moved more slowly, offered more muddied messages, and let politicians voices dominate.
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In early March, as Dow Constantine was asking Microsoft to close its offices and putting scientists in front of news cameras, de Blasio and New Yorks governor, Andrew Cuomo, were giving speeches that deëmphasized the risks of the pandemic, even as the city was announcing its first official cases. De Blasio initially voiced caution, saying that no one should take the coronavirus situation lightly, but soon told residents to keep helping the citys economy. Go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus, he tweeted on March 2ndone day after the first COVID-19 diagnosis in New York. He urged people to see a movie at Lincoln Center. On the day that Seattle schools closed, de Blasio said at a press conference that if you are not sick, if you are not in the vulnerable category, you should be going about your life. Cuomo, meanwhile, had told reporters that we should relax. He said that most infected people would recover with few problems, adding, We dont even think its going to be as bad as it was in other countries.
De Blasios and Cuomos instincts are understandable. A political leaders job, in most situations, is to ease citizens fears and buoy the economy. During a pandemic, however, all those imperatives are reversed: a politicians job is to inflame our paranoia, because waiting until we can see the danger means holding off until its too late. The citys epidemiologists were horrified by the comforting messages that de Blasio and Cuomo kept giving. Jeffrey Shaman, a disease modeller at Columbia, said, All you had to do was look at the West Coast, and you knew it was coming for us. Thats why Seattle and San Francisco and Portland were shutting things down. But New York dithered instead of telling people to stay home.
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