— from Lydia Miller —
I want to commend Dr Frank James, the Board of Health and County Council, for making the prudent, responsible decision to move San Juan County to Phase 2 and urge them to move to Phase 3 as soon as allowed.
Our local healthcare system has an abundance of tests, has handled positive cases as they have arisen and successfully referred patients for treatment as needed.
The last three months have shown us that some high traffic businesses were allowed to remain open and they have operated safety without endangering their employees and customers.
As businesses reopen, they will be required to follow rigorous state-mandated safety requirements. Those who are at higher risk can and should continue to stay at home and limit their exposure. However, those of us that are at lower risk need to be able return to our lives and restart our businesses ASAP. The longer we wait, the more drastic the permanent scar to our islands will be. Many of our lovely inns, cafes, restaurants and shops will never reopen and will be replaced by boarded up windows.
As business owners we provide meaningful work, fair wages, health benefits, and retirement plans, all of which contribute to the collective health and safety of our community.
The lodging moratorium has been devastating to the hospitality industry and many other businesses on the island.
Lodging tax has provided millions of dollars to fund county parks, community theater, cultural events, museums, community outreach, maintaining public restrooms, supporting public transportation, non profits that work towards protecting marine and wildlife, and seed money to new businesses…..all of which create the rich, diverse life we enjoy and the safety net many of us depend on. A fraction of the previous budget will be there next year.
As business owners, taxpayers and island residents with deep roots in the San Juan Islands, no one cares more about the health and well being of our community.
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Currently, the medical community is without sufficient information to advise how we should proceed, despite the potential loss of life involved with a misadventure. The business community is understandably concerned and, understandably, wants business. The politicians do not know how to deal with uncertainty.
So…how many lives are you willing to risk for the financial concerns? Indeed, this is the question. No-one is willing to admit an answer.
This dilemma of needing to choose between the economic health of those in our community, and the physical health of those in our community is a result, I believe, of the failure of our nation at the national level.
We can look at diverse other nations around the world to see success stories, and compare them to our failure, and thus the dilemma we know face. For example, Iceland, South Korea, New Zealand, and Vietnam all chose quickly to fight covid 19 with testing, extensive tracing, and social distancing. Those nations have now so minimized the spread of the virus that it is the obvious decision to reopen businesses and public life ( with some prudent limits).
In the US by contrast our leaders at the highest level denied the reality, and then refused to organize a national and effective response.
The president used his crisis powers to keep meat processing plants open — rather than to require that our abundant industrial might be directed toward producing tests and protective equipment.
That information, of course, does not resolve our current dilemma. It does tell who is responsible for the difficult decisions we know face.
I, too, would like to thank Dr. James and his team. Their decisive action, along with that of Governor Inslee, created a situation where the coronavirus was unable to take root on our island. Their directives and the vast majority of residents to adhere to those directives resulted in no community spread – cases only linked to off-island exposure (except within families on the island). That is incredible.
I think it is premature to applaud the opening of our businesses and particularly the influx of tourists to our island. We’ll have to see if adequate precautions are taken and are sufficient to keep the virus from spreading in significant ways on our island. I agree with David that it is deplorable that we must choose between physical health and economic health. But that is the dilemma.
Are we not a success story too? 15 cases and no deaths in a population of approximately 17,000. On June 3, Dr. James signed a new order allowing transient lodging to resume in San Juan County at 50 percent. “It is extremely likely there is no coronavirus spreading in our county right now — none,” James said. “The only way it’s going to get here is by being brought here from the outside. … If this were measles we’d all be having a party because it’s gone. Unfortunately, this disease is ensconced in other jurisdictions around us.” (ref Islands’ Sounder)
Where’s the dilemma?
The governor’s Four Phase plan to re-opening with the built-in safeguard of “3” weeks between each progression is a prudent response to all that’s going on around us, and to the fact that “tourism” IS SJCs economic engine. Asking for early re-openings in spite of this reality is not… it’s playing with fire.
“If a medically-informed response to a pandemic creates economic hardship so serious that the economic impacts are more deadly than the virus, you change your economic system not your response to the disease.”
I think Dr. James (under relentless pressure from the visitor’s bureau, and the county council) said it well during yesterday’s county council meeting–
36:40: Rick Hughes: “So, I saw your email this morning to everyone, I’m a little concerned that, well, I want to hear a little more about this, I’m a little concerned that you want to have a three-week waiting period from June 3rd for us to decide to go to Phase III. If I would have known about that I might have not supported going to the partial opening, so if you please could give us, I’d like to have a brief discussion now about that so if you could please go thru your email and your thought process that would be appreciated.”
Dr. James: “I’m happy to Rick, a very difficult decision for me, and I just wanted to share with you the details of why I have concluded what I have. In order for us to know what’s happening in our community takes time, to identify the cases of infection, and identifying cases that are ill takes longer… people have to become infected, they have to develop symptoms, they have to be seen by health care providers, they have to get tested, they have to see the results, and we have to inform the public and we have to investigate the (?), and the contacts, and find the source and isolate these individuals. Typically those cases, for them to come to our attention is about a two-week long process. To move forward carefully, and effectively I believe we need to balance the immediate health and safety of our citizens, and the economic opportunity which has definite health benefits from that activity. That balancing in my view has to be done based on real data. On the third we opened up 50% of the capacity of the main thing that draws and allows people to come to our community… the camping and transient accommodations. I believe it will take about 3 weeks from that date to leave no impact of this specific actions we’ve taken, and to gauge what that’s going to be across the median, and if in fact it’s safe to move from this point forward. I believe that people are doing a very good job, we’ve had robust discussions, people put in place safety features that I think will protect our community.
“There are also larger social issues as you know… our state’s goal is less than 2, and we currently have about 4.8 cases, and that is a key metric. In addition, although in SJC people have been extremely careful and safe in their outrage and protest, almost everybody had masks on… the protesters that were here. That isn’t true in all of the adjacent counties that are the source of most of our tourists. In Whatcom, Skagit, Island, Snohomish, and certainly Seattle there is almost certainly going to be a significant rebound in cases in those areas, and those are the places that tourists are going to be coming from.
“All of those reasons have given me significant pause, and I believe that it is better to go forward a little more slowly than to move forward and have to retreat. I never want to tell people we have to go back, we have to be significantly more restrictive than we have been in the past. I believe that it’s more sensible, more sane, and more effective to move forward a little bit more slowly. It is an extension beyond the date we may be able to move forward. But, if you look at all the counties that are moving forward into stage three they’re not like San Juan County, they don’t have large numbers of tourists coming there, they don’t have the robust but also delicate infrastructure that we have. We’ve done a good job, I spent most of my weekend working with various people that have ? about what we’ve already done… about the safety, their own personal safety, and also about the employers, business people that are honestly making every effort to do this safely and effectively. I think we need to find out if that’s going to work before we take an additional step forward.”
Michael, much respect for maintaining a voice of reason amidst the relentless necro-economic cheerleading.
Thank you for posting that transcript of important Council discussions, Michael — particularly that of Dr. James. I listened to much of the discussions at the previous Council meeting, on June 2, and thought that optimistic projections of possibly going to Phase III on Saturday, June 13 to be just plain SILLY. The Council members were even discussing the possibility of a special June 13 meeting to be able to decide to go ahead into Phase III. Which is partly why I questioned whether we were being led by “grown-ups” in a previous OI comment.
If we are to make good, data-driven decisions, then we have to allow sufficient time for enough credible data to be accumulated — and that is most definitely NOT the 11 days between June 2 and June 13. As Dr. James noted yesterday, we will need at least TWO FULL WEEKS of data and possibly more, plus enough time to analyze the data so that we know what has been happening in response to partial reopening.
Going to Phase III before July 1 is just plain foolhardy.
If it were up to y’all, we’d never open, and I’m pretty sure that’s what many of you really want. Anti-tourism. Got it. Being shut down for almost three months with no new cases since mid April – How much longer do we need to wait? This isn’t about the virus, this has moved to being about personal beliefs and desires. We know a lot more about the virus today, and the data clearly supports opening NOW.
The CC not happy. They will have another meeting on Saturday to discuss further to see if James has changed his opinion.
Michael R. a three-week waiting period from June 3rd for us to decide to go to Phase III would put it at somewhere around the end of June (just in time for a big celebratory fourth of July). You know, the biggest, best ever. “Bigger than Pearl Harbor.” How better to get back to normal?