Don’t let sunny Whatcom weather lure you away from coronavirus social distancing
With a warm and sunny weekend ahead, officials are reminding Whatcom County residents to keep social distancing during the new coronavirus pandemic.
Sunny skies with temperatures around 60 degrees are forecast daily through Easter Sunday and the end of Passover on Thursday, April 16.
State officials warned Washington residents not to let their guard down.
“Public fatigue of stay-home order” remains a serious risk throughout Washington, according to the state Emergency Operations Center’s situation report for Thursday, April 9, 2020.
Gov. Jay Inslee warned Washington residents Thursday that progress is being made against spread of the COVID-19 disease, but it isn’t time to ease social distancing.
“If we behave like we have gone back to normal, if we stop physical distancing, it could undo all our progress. It could get more people sick. It could get people killed,” Inslee said in a statement.
We’re not even at halftime in this effort,” Inslee said. “We know that the eyes of the country are on us. So let’s keep proving what’s possible when we stand united — but at least six feet apart — against this virus.”
So far, Whatcom County residents are among the tops in Washington state and the nation at using social distancing to keep the new coronavirus in check, a Western Washington University administrator said in an online panel discussion Wednesday.
“It looks like people are social distancing very similar to the way they are in Seattle, where, obviously, the epidemic was early and more severe,” said Jack Herring, dean of WWU’s Fairhaven College.
”Even in Snohomish and Skagit counties to the south of us, people are social distancing less,” Herring said.
WWU’s Herring, who has experience using computer models to understand complex systems, has developed several scenarios for virus spread in Whatcom County — showing that between 100 people and 4,200 people could die locally, depending on the success of social distancing.
He cited new data from Google that shows how well Whatcom County residents are following the state’s social distancing guidelines.
Google tracked the movement of mobile phones whose owners had enabled the location history option and found that their time in residential areas increased 13% from Feb. 16 to March 28, 2020.
Time in residential areas in all Washington counties also increased an averaged of 13%, and the increase averaged 12% nationwide, according to Google.
Tracking was done anonymously, Google said.
That six-week period from mid-February to the end of March is when COVID-19 disease cases began to rise sharply across the nation, and especially Washington state, which was an early hot spot.
According to Google data, Whatcom County is performing well in other categories that measure the success of social distancing:
▪ Trips to workplaces decreased by 44% in Whatcom County, compared to a statewide average of 41% and a national average of 38%.
▪ Trips to grocery stores and pharmacies decreased by 34% in Whatcom County, compared to a state average of 26% and a national average of 22%.
▪ Trips to retail and recreation destinations decreased by 57% in Whatcom County, compared to a state average of 48% and a national average of 47%.
▪ Trips to transit stations decreased by 69% in Whatcom County, compared to a state average of 56% and a national average of 51%.
One area where Whatcom and Washington state fell below the U.S. was trips to parks. There was an 11% decrease in Whatcom County and the state average, while the national average decreased 19%.
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 1:03 PM.
