I Live in Seattle, the Epicenter of the U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak
An insider look at daily life during the pandemic
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Follow Elemental’s ongoing coverage of the coronavirus outbreak here.
I live in Seattle, the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak. Here is what it’s like: Car traffic is drastically reduced. Three downtown restaurants closed last Wednesday. For good — not for safety’s sake. They ran out of money. There’s cause to believe that is happening every day.
Some movie theaters are open but capping ticket sales at 50% capacity to allow for space between people. Others have shut down. Public libraries, community centers, and farmers markets are closed.
Infections have been confirmed in 10 retirement homes. My 86-year-old mother-in-law lives in one of them, half a mile from my house. A patient there was hospitalized a few days ago.
This week, all gatherings for over 250 people were banned. I’ve had two literary events canceled in the past few days. I’m not financially impacted by those cancellations, but many Seattle artists are. Ijeoma Oluo, the author of So You Want to Talk About Race and a local treasure, has started a fund to help them out.
South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day.
Another $2 million fund has also been started to help gig workers and other vulnerable communities during what has quickly become clear is as much an economic crisis as a health one.
Seattle’s fatality rate looks bonkers high, around 10% versus the 3% reported globally. This is because our supply of test kits is staggeringly inadequate, so the people getting tested are mostly the people who are obviously sick. Because we aren’t accounting for the mildly ill or the asymptomatic infected, we lack a realistic denominator — as is the case throughout the U.S. The state is now spinning up its own test production, and tests will be free, but the time lost due to — what do you call it — the absence of a functioning federal government was not time we could afford to lose.
Far fewer than 10,000 Americans have been tested by now. South Korea, by contrast, is testing 10,000 people a day. At the Kirkland nursing home where most of the…
