The Health Department held a briefing this morning on the latest coronavirus news and shared a lot of wonky details but it all pretty much boils down to: Things are bad; it’s going to get worse; and it’s going to be like this for a long time. As of today, King County’s closing in on 12,000 confirmed cases and just over 600 deaths, with a disproportionate impact on communities of color. We’re seeing around 132 new cases per day right now, compared to 40 per day a month ago.
“The disease is as severe as ever, and the risk isn’t going away in the foreseeable future,” says Health Officer Dr. Jeff Duchin. “We need to accept … long term behavior change and restructuring how we go about our lives.”
Well, shit.
Most of the recent increase has been among people in their 20s and 30s, with a particular hotspot among the University of Washington’s frats and sororities, which have seen 131 cases. Younger folks aren’t hospitalized or killed as much as older folks, but of course they’re still contagious and can pass the virus along to others. And on top of that, we don’t know anything about the long-term effects of the virus, and have seen in rare cases that people have reported respiratory and nerve issues after recovering.
