Northern Virginia not ready to ease COVID restrictions
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| Northern Virginia is still seeing a rise in COVID hospitalizations. [Inova Health System] |
Northern Virginia is not ready to begin reopening, as it hasn’t met the health metrics outlined in Gov. Ralph Northam’s plan for Phase I.
Under Northam’s guidelines, Phase I will begin May 15 and will allow non-essential businesses, barber shops, hair salons, and places of worship to open under certain restrictions.
The governor’s Forward Virginia blueprint for easing restrictions that have been place to slow the spread of coronavirus is based on the state meeting five key health indicators.
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Jeffrey McKay and other Northern Virginia leaders sent a letter to Northam May 10 stating that while the industry-specific guidelines provided for Phase I are “appropriate and prudent,” they have not been met in Northern Virginia.
Related story: Northam offers more details on easing COVID restrictions
“The transition to Phase 1 in Northern Virginia should occur when our region has achieved the threshold metrics,” states the letter, which was signed by Arlington County board chair Libby Garvey, Loudoun County board chair Phyllis Randall, Prince William County board chair Ann Wheeler, and Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson, as well as McKay.
Those jurisdictions have half of the commonwealth’s COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, the letter states.
Related story: Annandale zip code 22003 has the second-highest number of COVID cases in Virginia
“While it is certainly useful to examine statewide metrics as we gauge the success of current
public health policies, we feel strongly that any changes to current policies be guided by what is
occurring in our region,” the Northern Virginia leaders state.
A letter from the health directors of the Northern Virginia jurisdictions states that they have analyzed the metrics underlying the governor’s decision and concluded “we do not believe the Northern Virginia region has met the criteria for moving into Phase 1 at this time.”
“We recommend continuing current community mitigation strategies and reassessing this on a regular basis to determine when Northern Virginia can move into Phase 1 according to these criteria (and any additional agreed-upon criteria),” the health directors state.
Related story: Virginia to begin easing COVID restrictions next
These are the health metrics underlying the Forward Virginia plan followed by the assessment from the Northern Virginia health directors:
- Downward trend of positive tests over a period of 14 days – Unable to access data. As of May 4, the data shows that Northern Virginia is higher than the rest of Virginia: 27 percent for the region and 18 percent for Virginia as a whole. “Without additional information, we cannot assess whether it has gone down over the past 14 days.”
- Downward trend of hospitalizations over a period of 14 days – This goal has not been met in Northern Virginia.
- Increased testing – Unable to access. The Northern Virginia health directors currently only have baseline data. They have asked the Virginia Department of Health for more data.
- Increased contact tracing – Unmet. The infrastructure is not yet in place to respond to every new case, trace and actively monitor their close contacts, and coordinate testing for symptomatic contacts.
- Enough hospital beds and intensive care capacity – Unable to access. Available critical care beds continue to decrease but still fall within normal operating capacity. A 20 percent surge capacity has not yet been utilized.
- Increasing and sustainable supply of personal protective equipment – This goal has been met. Northern Virginia hospitals appear to have an adequate supply at this time. But PPE for outpatient facilities (private practices, long-term care facilities, and first responders) continues to be a challenge.
“We eagerly wish to rebuild our economy and help our residents recover,” states the letter from McKay and the other regional leaders. “It is only through our regional achievement of these milestones that we will be positioned to avoid a more damaging return to business closures later in the summer.”
13 responses to “Northern Virginia not ready to ease COVID restrictions”
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To the so many people what does not wear protection, that dismiss the social distancing instructions and that are acting like this is not relevant to them,
we know you, we see you every day, at grocery stores, at home depot, at the streets.
this all thing is on your hands too. stop acting like freaking ignorants.
To the so many people who do little to no analysis of the myriad data points that would tell them (based on a simple review of the state and county's own data) that this is a virus that overwhelmingly affects the elderly with one or more comorbidities and has little to no effect on children and working age adults, we know you and we see you every day trying to shame those who are living their lives because they have done simple easy to find research that doesn't come from politicians that there is no scientific basis for the six foot rule, or for using masks in healthy adults, who don't account for the people who lost their jobs who will never get them back, who don't account for those who are skipping important health care appointments because they "aren't allowed to go," have increased stress that will negatively affect their long term health, this all thing is on your hands too. stop acting like ignorants.
You do realize that the only reason we’ve “only” lost 75k people SO FAR is because of social distancing? I know this situation is hard on all of us, but the nations older population are not just some sacrificial lambs so you can get to your job at Starbucks or whatever.
The only reason is social distancing? How do you know that? The scandal here is that we have evidence (from Fairfax county website) that most deaths come with the elderly. We have no evidence that there is widespread death in people under 60, the working age population. We should have been protecting nursing homes but instead we closed down everything else with no basis. As far as the social distancing working, no meaningful measures were in place for 56 days between the first confirmed death and the lockdowns. We should have seen a spike in deaths in that period but we didn't. And speaking of deaths, the way they are counted is not uniform or even confirmed. Many deaths are "attributed" to the virus, but noone has actually tested the deceased. Again this is all information that is on various government websites. Of cours 75k deaths is bad but it is a lower number than the bad 2017-18 flu season. Noone shut down anything because of that. Lastly, when things open up, if social distancing worked, shouldn't we expect a spike in cases and deaths? And if we don't what does that mean?
24% of men and 16% of women over 65 are in the workforce. Not everyone over 60 is in a nursing home, lots of them work. The first confirmed case was 19 Jan, schools in FFX closed 12 Mar (less than 30 days later), most states started closing and issuing stay at home orders the following week. You didn't see a spike in deaths in January because no one had it. Social distancing worked because fewer people got it. Deaths are attributed to the virus based on CDC recommendations on probable cause; e.g. if someone dies of pneumonia as a complication from COVID, it's ruled a COVID death because test kits by and large are being used on the living. On average, influenza's burden in the US is 15,000 – 55,000 deaths per year with 30-50 million infections. COVID-19's burden is 80,000 deaths with 1.3 million infections, do I need to do the math for you too? Testing difficulties and issues with estimation are present in estimating BOTH those figures and very well documented – that doesn't mean they're inherently wrong. When things do open up, you will see a spike in case and deaths, just wait. Is there anything else you'd like me to correct here?
Look, I am not going to go back and forth with you and will avoid the snark. Please take these comments as good faith effort to have a reasonable dialogue about the efficacy of social distancing and wearing masks. I think people who are willing to evaluate the data and base decisions in good faith on what we know, not what may happen or what could be concluded based on the data can still end up with different conclusions. To only assume that there can only be one conclusion and that all decisions made on those conclusions are wrong and done in bad faith is antithetical to democratic principles. I have concluded, based on my analysis of many data points, that masks are unnecessary for me for myriad reasons and I think they are unhelpful for others. That said, if they think masks are helpful for them, that is there choice. With regard to your analysis above, I take it in good faith, but it has errors in math and comparisons of numbers and discounts rates of death and infection and others where you misinterpreted or misunderstood the issue I raised. But I view that as something that reasonable people could discuss. For example, the first known case was January 19, but to assume there could not be cases before that strains credulity. Also, I raised a specific influenza statistic, not all years. You changed the issue. Your statement "social distancing worked because fewer people got it" is a post hoc logical fallacy. In short, correlation doesn't mean causation.
Man you are an absolute master at both equivocating and changing the narrative of your argument depending on where you're losing. Kudos to you, this is pointless.
Sorry for the equivocating and narrative changing. Let me try to recast and narrow this to just social distancing (since masks have been deemed to be not useful in multiple studies but have been ignored in the last 120 days):
1. One of the two popular models for tracking the virus, the Imperial College model indicated there would be about 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. We are at 80k (I'll concede that number for the sake of argument notwithstanding the lack of standarized way that deaths are counted). There is no evidence of that or that those numbers would have been reached if we didn't lock down. Several comparisons can be made to support this conclusion but I'll focus on Sweden because they did not lockdown in any material way like we did. They focused on nursing homes, canceled big gatherings. The U.S. has about 32 times the population of Sweden but if you compare the rate of daily cases the shape of the curve is remarkably similar. Such a comparison shows how a country locking down versus one that hasn't has no material difference in the one country that did not close their economy. The University of Washington IMHE model that many relied on for justifying lockdowns factored in full social distancing predicted 100k-250k deaths. Given the supposed benefit of lockdowns, social distancing, and incubation time of the virus, we should have technically seen a drastic decrease in cases throughout April. That did not happen. Now, you don't have to believe any of this but it is a reasonable place to have a discussion about the efficacy of social distancing. To try to shame anyone for not social distancing as the original commenter did is ignorant at best, but more likely willfully ignorant, intellectually disingenuous of facts that are readily available for anyone to analyze. Trying to shame people, as the original commenter tried to is a fascist tactic.
Great, appreciate us focusing on those statements. Again, I'm not an expert in any of this, I just like reading, but it seems to me that comparing the US to Sweden just based on the shape of the curve of their infection rates as a basis for why other factors did or did not lead to a spread is a big leap in logic. You can't just ignore the fact that the US is vastly larger than Sweden as not having an affect. This is cherry picking at it's finest and Sweden is a vastly different country with very different social norms. Why wouldn't you choose to compare to Australia or NZ, where a massive and prompt lock down crushed the spread? Also, I don't follow the logic of your statement that "given the supposed benefit of lockdowns…we should have technically seen a drastic increases in cases throughout April." We did see a drastic increase, primarily because a) a lot of people weren't actually locking down/social distancing — the varying degrees to which localities imposed those rules left a lot of regions fairly limp in that department and b) the damage was already done, people were already spreading the virus to a great extent in March — you couldn't stop that choo choo.
All fair points worthy of discussion. Obviously hard to unpack all of this here. I appreciate the engagement. It is what we should be doing. Not what the original commenter (not you) was doing which was trying to shame people into wearing masks. I agree with your last statement about virus spreading; I just don't think we can stop the spread. To your point about Australia or NZ – yes – good comparison points to make to help understand the spread. I'd be curious to see if they have spikes higher than other countries when they open back up. I think this all points to a need for far more information and analysis than has been done on the efficacy of masks, social distancing, etc etc etc, including my you and me.
Your narrative is outdated. What happened to flattening the curve? Goalposts moved, bait and switch call it what you want but I'll social distance and wear a mask when Neil Ferguson does. The intent was never to stop the spread or eradicate the disease. Now that is what these politicians are trying to do.
Congrats for being a part of the problem.
Some of you blame politicians when scientists and medical professionals around the world are advising social distancing, wearing masks, etc. The main politician in America who agrees with you is our President. I appreciate that you are letting us all know exactly who you are by not wearing masks when you are out and about.