TPM Reader RS sends in this dispatch from Kirkland, Washington:
Thought you might be curious to hear from someone who lives about 500 yards from the nursing care facility and down the street from the hospital at ground zero.
People here are actually quite calm and normal. There are grocery store runs on staples and you can’t get any hand sanitizer. As parents we feel doomed that open schools will mean inevitable spread to everyone.
The scandal is that no one is offering our community coordinated testing. We are totally in the dark about how widespread this is going to be. We are being given advice to avoid contact but go about our normal days, which is useless because it is contradictory and also it is advice given without any knowledge of the extent of the spread.
The national press briefings are clownish when people are dying a football field away from you. To hear every briefing kick off with a celebration of the President is insulting beyond belief to people living in an outbreak zone. Everyone should be hammering the administration for community wide testing and should be asking Trump right to his face when it will begin. Over and over and over again.
I assume this will pass and we’ll be fine but not because of our elected government but in spite of it. That is the shame of living under incompetency and sycophancy of this administration. It would give me hope if the press was angrier and more aggrieved at being bathed in lies about this very real crisis.
Demand testing. It’s what matters. Take it from people in an outbreak zone.
If you’re affected by the outbreak, let us hear from you.
