Coronavirus Reflections

When I wrote my 2019 reflection in December, there was no global understanding of the threat of COVID19 (more commonly known as coronavirus). My personal focus was the 2020 elections, ensuring we gain enough seats back to end the stalemates of Congress and Arizona Legislature and pass progressive policy that ACTUALLY works for everyday people beginning in 2021.

Sitting here on March 18, it's pretty surreal. The first case that brought this to our personal radar popped up in Oregon at a Lake Oswego elementary school on February 29. I took this seriously from that moment but until we got honest reporting out of Italy and South Korea we didn't understand the scope of the threat we are facing. (Lesson to future generations: authoritarian governments will hide these types of existential threats because it threatens their own personal power.) Seeing this originate out of China under Xi's leadership has caused many experts to be skeptical of the exact numbers, and genuinely concerned about the scope of this threat.

A week ago on March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID a pandemic. State government by state government here in the states has step up over the last week where our federal leadership initially failed. We now have first hand accounts and numbers of destruction in Italy and we are in a race to slow the spread called "Flattening The Curve".

‍