PANDEMIC

PANDEMIC. On March 16th the following announcement was made:

          At tonight’s City Council meeting, Dubuque Mayor Roy D. Buol will declare a state of emergency in Dubuque 
          in response to the coronavirus.

          At this time, there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Dubuque County but the proclamation follows the 
          Iowa Department of Public Health’s (IDPH) notification of community spread of the virus in Iowa and 
          recommendation of the immediate implementation of mitigation measures to slow the spread of the virus, as 
          well as Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ recommendation that all Iowa schools close for four weeks. 

          “One of the greatest responsibilities of an elected official is the protection of the electorate served and 
          the protection of the greater public health and safety,” stated Boul. “I hereby determine that a state of 
          emergency or public danger exists.”

          Through tonight’s proclamation, Mayor Buol is prohibiting gatherings of 50 or more people on public property 
          and strongly suggests private gatherings of 50 or more people on private property should be avoided. The 
          proclamation follows a statement last week encouraging social distancing.

          In addition, the proclamation also orders the closure of some City buildings, for the protection of residents 
          and city staff.  Specifically, the City of Dubuque is closing the following City buildings to public access 
          beginning Tuesday, March 17, through at least Sunday, April 12:

                              City Hall, 50 W. 13th St.
                              City Hall Annex, 1300 Main St.
                              Housing & Community Development Department, Historic Federal Building, 350 W 6th St.
                              Leisure Services Department Office and Bunker Hill Golf Course, 2200 Bunker Hill Rd.
                              Municipal Services Center, 925 Kerper Ct.
                              Multicultural Family Center, 1157 Central Ave
                              Comiskey Park Building, 255 E. 24th St.
                              Allison Henderson Park Building, 1500 Loras Blvd.

           City staff in these buildings will continue to work and provide services to the public electronically, 
           by phone, by mail, and when necessary, by appointment. Details on payment options for utility bills, parking 
           tickets, and all permits and fees will be announced tomorrow. 

           Additionally, all City of Dubuque Leisure Services recreational programs and Multicultural Family Center (MFC) 
           programs are cancelled through at least April 12. City staff will contact those registered and offer refunds 
           and/or credits. Registration for summer programs will not begin until at least April 13. Please note, all 
           meetings and other gatherings scheduled at the Comiskey Park building and the Allison Henderson building are 
           cancelled. During the shutdown, City staff will be sanitizing all areas of each of these facilities.

           City staff is currently working on a method that would allow the MFC’s Food Pantry scheduled for Friday, 
           March 20, to continue -- while keeping both the pantry participants, volunteers, and staff protected by following 
           the protocols of the CDC and IDPH. City staff will be corresponding with Food Pantry participants to provide updates. 

           For information and questions related to City services and programs, please contact the appropriate City department 
           or submit a request through the City’s Citizen Support Center at www.cityofdubuque.org. 

           For information about Coronavirus (COVID-19), visit https://idph.iowa.gov/Emerging-Health-Issues/Novel-Coronavirus.  
           For Dubuque County specific information, call the Dubuque Visiting Nurses Association at 563.556.6200 (8 a.m. – 4:30 
           p.m., Monday-Friday), the Dubuque County Health Department at 563.557.7396 (8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday), or 
           the City of Dubuque Health Services Department at 563.589.4181(8 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday-Friday).

The immediate cause of the announcement was a similar statement made by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds on March 15th and similar statements coming from the White House in the previous days. The root of the issue was coronavirus, a disease which had reached pandemic proportions. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defined pandemic as "an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population. Believed to have originated in China, the disease spread worldwide leading to a national lockdown in Italy, repeated requests by public health officials in the United States to limit travel and practice self-quarantine if recently outside the United States, accusations that it was simply a Democratic Party attempt to deny Donald Trump a re-election to the presidency, and most recently the shutdown of many high profile public events, sporting events, and public schools in the eastern United States.

On March 14, 2020 the closest of Iowa's seventeen cases was in Iowa City, in Wisconsin was in Dane County, and in Illinois McHenry County--a two hour drive from Jo Daviess County. Despite this, Mary Rose Corrigan, the public health specialist for the City of Dubuque, maintained it was not a question of "if" but when the disease would reach Dubuque. Wisconsin and Illinois announced all schools would be closed until March 30th. (1) After four more cases of the virus were discovered in Iowa, Governor Reynolds stated all schools should close for four weeks. (2) Such caution coincided with a study by United Kingdom epidemiologists that attempts to slow or mitigate--rather than actively halt or suppress--the virus could overwhelm the number of intensive care hospital beds and lead to an estimated 250,000 deaths in the UK and over a million in the United States. (3)

As late at March, the United States was significantly slow in testing people for the disease. White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. The government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated. In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with John Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” An independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”(4) Repeated assurances from the President that "this will just go away" and claims by his supporters that the disease was a "hoax," caused the total number of tests given in months in the United States to be far less than South Korean health officials were giving daily. Getting precise figures also met such challenges as Vermont no longer reporting non-Vermont resident cases of the virus. (5) Rapidly losing ground were attempts to trace the passage of the disease as it became "community spread" meaning people cannot identify how or where they became infected. (6)

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Source:

1. Hinga, Allie, "Pandemic Impacts Spread Locally," Telegraph Herald, March 14, 2020, p. 1A

2. Des Moines Register, "Reynolds: All Iowa Schools Should Close," Telegraph Herald, March 16, 2020, p. 1A

3. Walsh, Nick Paton, "U.S., UK Coronavirus Strategies Shifted Following UK Epidemiologists Ominous Report," CNN, March 17, 2020

4. Garret, Laurie, "Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response," Voice, January 31, 2020, Online: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/

5. Hassan, Carma, "Vermont is Changing the Way it Reports Cases," CNN, March 17, 2020

6. Des Moines Register