Shawn Vestal: Our matching death rates suggest we’ve already had plenty of Idaho influence

Mayor Nadine Woodward, along with 20 other Eastern Washington mayors, is asking Gov. Jay Inslee to take their suggestions for reopening businesses.

In a three-page letter sent to Inslee last week, Woodward recommends expanding capacity in restaurants, stores, gyms and other spaces; complains that she and other leaders on the dry side of the Cascades have not had a seat at the table; and suggests that because we’re so close to no-holds-barred Idaho over here, we should require special consideration.

“As a region bordered by a state with much different public health guidance and economic opening, we have unique needs,” she wrote. “The reality is many of our cities operate as a larger, joint community with our neighbors to the east driven by shared employment, a primary and secondary housing base, and recreation, leisure and shopping.”

She doesn’t quite say it, but the sense seems to be: Let’s be more like Idaho.

That was my read on it anyway. Woodward’s spokesman, Brian Coddington, said that’s oversimplifying where she’s coming from, and said she is trying to find a balance between the restrictions in Washington that have left many of her constituents frustrated and the openness they see across the border – not pushing for a wholesale adoption of Idaho’s approach.

“It’s suggesting a happy medium,” he said.

Many of those who have been unhappy with Inslee’s shutdown orders have cast their envious eyes toward Idaho and wished for more of that over here. The problem with that is, on the most important pandemic metric – deaths – we’ve already been too much like Idaho.

We live in a state with one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the country, at 66 per 100,000 – and yet our rate in Spokane County is 115, slightly higher than Kootenai County’s. (Idaho’s statewide rate is 115 per 100,000).

It’s not something to envy, and it’s certainly no endorsement of Idaho’s public health approach. There are many factors to untangle in that statistic, but one of them has to be the cross-border mingling, the driving to and fro, the number of Spokanites joining the crowds in Coeur d’Alene restaurants and coming home, etc.

We are indeed one joint community – virally as well as economically.

These figures are sometimes raised by those pushing for faster, wider reopening, who argue Kootenai County is doing “just as good” as we are, without all the bothersome restrictions, or even to suggest the restrictions have had no positive effect.

But that’s a screwy, upside-down way to put it.

They’re not doing as good as we are – we’re doing as bad as they are.

We’re at a hopeful moment in the crisis, but we have a habit of blowing it in the hopeful moments, rushing rashly forward instead of taking it slow and smart, and producing new surges in transmission.

A lot of this grows from the understandable feeling we all have of being bottled-up and denied the things we like to do, but it’s been fueled by political leaders who have undermined the effort to be slow and safe.

The mayor, whose celebratory reaction to the ouster of our health officer has been well-noted, has pushed back against Inslee’s orders consistently. Sometimes rashly – and incorrectly – on social media, and sometimes in the formal, obsequious kind of pleading on display in the most recent letter, in which she couches her complaints more delicately.

“Our input, experiences and perspectives have been underrepresented in the process of developing reopening guidance that affects our local businesses, youth and collegiate sports, and hospitality services, and we are respectfully requesting a seat at the table, a voice in the conversation and a greater presence in the statewide messaging and communication,” she wrote.

The letter offers specific suggestions for Inslee to develop the guidelines for Phase 3. The fact that he has not laid out clear, specific guidance for that phase has been a point of criticism, though it does not seem unreasonable that he would continue watching the case numbers, variant behaviors and vaccine program in developing next steps.

Woodward’s recommendations, on the other hand, are very specific. She recommends 50% capacity for indoor dining, 75% for outdoor dining, and 25% capacity for bars. Gyms could operate at 50% capacity, as could all pools. Indoor stores could have 50% capacity, and state and city government buildings could open at 25%.

The recommendations were not developed with input from the Spokane Region Health District, but from consultation with the other mayors, business representatives and community partners, Coddington said. They are meant as suggestions for the state’s development of guidelines when we move into the next phase.

It may be instructive to look at her recommendations for restaurant capacity and note how closely they align with those proposed by the hospitality industry. The mayor doesn’t name-check them directly in her letter, but she does suggest it’s time we start “leaning on the expertise of those who have a vested interest in protecting their customers, employees and livelihoods.”

Is that whose expertise we should lean on now, as we reach the one-year anniversary of the virus’s arrival in this country and hope that things are starting to improve?

Sounds a little too much like the Idaho way.