With limited testing, we really don’t know how many Alaskans have been infected with COVID-19

The best reporting I’ve read in any publication about the danger posed by the coronavirus to Alaska is this article published in the online version the New Yorker Friday.

The story, by Caroline Lester, a writer living in Unalaska, puts the threat into context, making it obvious that the risk remains enormous and the emergency has not ended. The crisis has not ended in Anchorage, Fairbanks and other cities. It has not ended in rural Alaska.

The possibility that our health care systems could be overloaded with seriously ill patients should concern every Alaskan.

Relatively few Alaskans have been tested for the coronavirus and the days or two weeks that pass between exposure and the appearance of symptoms—or not—make it hard to see cause and effect in time to do anything in response to an outbreak.

The research shows that many people carry the virus and have no symptoms, while others are close to death within days of feeling sick. This is a rolling health care disaster in which the victims cannot be readily identified.

The continued failure of the federal government on testing has added immeasurably to the uncertainty, the risk and the economic damage.

A lot of this is lost on President Trump, who takes no responsibility for his catastrophic errors. His skill at dividing the country has now taken the form of inciting extremists to protest health and safety measures and put countless lives in danger.

In the cities and villages of Alaska, the lack of widespread testing and the lack of health care infrastructure continues to make all of us vulnerable to some degree.

“If the virus does come, the results could be devastating,” Lester writes of Unalaska, a statement that could apply to hundreds of other places like it in our state. “Unalaska is the largest Alaskan town without a hospital. There is a clinic—Iliuliuk Family and Health Services—with two doctors and a small staff. The clinic has three ventilators, more than most communities of our size have. But when asked whether those ventilators would be enough, Murray Buttner, one of the doctors, replied, ‘It’s probably more than we’d ever be able to handle.’”

“With such a small medical staff, even three patients on ventilators would be overwhelming,” Lester writes.

The remoteness and isolation in Alaska is both a blessing and a curse in a pandemic, she says. The blessing is that the lack of population density has helped hold down the number of cases. The curse can come because in relatively small towns people congregate in the same limited number of places, creating a risk for widespread exposure.

While thinking about the waiting and the preparation taking place in rural Alaska, remember that the political pressure on Gov. Mike Dunleavy to allow businesses to open and travel to resume is increasing.

The pressure is certainly understandable, given the enormous economic consequences of the statewide shutdown of many activities and the closure of places where people gather for work and amusement.

The scope of this is like nothing we’ve seen before and people who have been lulled into complacency are too quick to say it’s time to move on and get back to “normal.”

The daily tallies at the Dunleavy press conferences and the reassuring words about low Alaska numbers obscure the reality that a handful of sick people in the wrong places could create a nightmare scenario before we know it. When a problem is recognized it will be worse than it appears because of the time delay after exposure.

I worry that some people in Alaska politics pushing for “normal” conditions are misinformed and spreading bad information.

For instance, Alaska Public Media had a good account Thursday that quoted three prominent Republicans who defended a loosening of travel and commercial restrictions, backing up their ideas with foolish claims.

Tuckerman Babcock, former Dunleavy political mastermind, falsely claimed “the emergency is over” and people should be able to get back to work as long as we care for the sick, trace their contacts with others and test others. “Let everyone else free to live, work and recreate. Enough already.”

There is not enough testing. Not nearly enough to preserve public health or to make Babcock’s vision defensible.

The mayor of the Kenai borough, Charlie Pierce, said we need more tests and he asked Dunleavy on Facebook, “please return our liberties so we can succeed.”

“If you are sick or in a high-risk group, please stay home. Let those that can work safely, work,” wrote Pierce.

If only things were as easy as Pierce describes. When medical personnel tested the sailors on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, they found 600 were infected, but 350 of them had no symptoms. The 350 had no idea they had the virus and that they could infect others.

There is no way for Charlie Pierce or anyone else to say who in Kenai can work safely and who cannot. Sure we need more tests. Where are they? This is a national disgrace.

In the Alaska Public Media story, former Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan complained about the continue closure of the downtown Anchorage bar of which he is a co-owner. “Think about this: Who’s going to invest in a bar or a restaurant if every time there’s a new flu out there, you basically have to shut your doors?” Sullivan said.

Sullivan, who was rewarded by Dunleavy for his political support with a job on the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, should inform himself about the difference between this pandemic and the flu. Another politician in need of more information is Sen. Mike Shower, who “said he thinks social distancing has done more harm than the virus.”

“Shower said there are thousands of residents in his district who have lost jobs, and hundreds of closed businesses, even though the virus ‘has not proven to be the zombie apocalypse.’” Give Shower his stated wish about opening all businesses and that apocalypse could happen.

The social distancing and travel restrictions in Alaska have worked to hold down the number of cases and allow our relatively small health care facilities to keep from becoming overwhelmed. Anyone who thinks that continued success is guaranteed had better start to pay attention to what is happening Outside and around the world.