Seattle was the epicenter of coronavirus. Now it's the best case scenario.

[Celerity]

LETTER FROM SEATTLE

Letter From Your City’s Future

A week ahead on the outbreak curve, Seattle’s already resorting to motel hospitals and bandana masks. And we’re the best case scenario.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/24/coronavirus-seattle-dispatch-future-144876



My town, Seattle, has fancied itself the city of the future since 1962, when it erected a flying saucer on stilts called the Space Needle and staged the Century 21 Exposition. The rise of several eras’ defining technology companies—Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon—cemented the notion.

Now that aspiration has come true in a way none of those jet-age dreamers could have imagined or wanted: Seattle became the point of the pandemic spear, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic in America. Washington state, with less than a fifth California’s population, has had more confirmed coronavirus cases (2,221 as of Monday, 1,170 of them in Seattle and surrounding King County) and more than three times as many deaths (110; 87 of them in and around Seattle).

Last week, the tally of confirmed cases in New York, with its far larger and denser population, vastly overtook Seattle’s total. But most other American cities are still days or weeks away from where we are on the curve. Our experience here, as the U.S. metropolis that has been weathering COVID-19 longest, can still tell people and policymakers elsewhere something about what to expect and how to deal with it.

It won’t be pretty, even after you get used to empty store shelves and restaurants, gyms and other public establishments being closed. Be prepared for field hospitals, triage plans and campaigns to fabricate hospital protective gear from hardware store materials. But resilient souls may also find solace and renewal in the quiet and solitude of a lockdown, a reconnection with nature and loved ones.

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