I'm not scared of no ice. My F150 is four wheel drive.

I'm good staying home, practicing common sense-- and yes you are damn right I am lucky I have a job right now where I can work from home-- and I am not taking that fact for granted. Planning nothing new until I get vaccinated in like 2025 the way things are going. And thanks to Donald I am not responsible and a fucking retard we are left in this situation doing the best we can... Or in the Republikkan mantra.. it's everyone for yourselves, bitches. Freedumb.

@4 I basically pointed out the inconsistency of what Inslee was doing yesterday and you told me “I didn’t know what the f I was talking about” and called me a bunch of names like usual. Now you’re all about it cause Rich writes it? I love the equivocation.

@6 - Yes. I wouldn't be able to enjoy the dining otherwise.

@6 FTW

I'll be staying home until vaccinated. Good luck to everyone. The Trump administration fucked us big time.

@1 Brent Gumbo: Hopefully you and your F150 aren't sitting on thin ice.
@3 Ignorauns, @6 Sir Toby II , Phoebe in Wallingford @7, and @8 Lastlight for the WIN.
Agreed, seconded, thirded, fourthed and fifth.
Some of my favorite restaurants keep emailing me dinner specials to order online from 25 miles away. Sadly, I am just staying home, especially with my beloved car in winter hibernation.
Everyone stay masked, healthy, and safe.

'...Duchin said moving forward is "understandable" given the fact that we're "heading in the right direction" and that we lack evidence of major spreading caused by the new variants.'

So, we cautiously begin re-opening, and if case numbers rise, we revert. We've been doing this for months, as @4 recalls. I'm with @6, staying indoors as much as possible until we get sufficient immunity across our populations.

If we're naming the variants after countries where they were discovered, then we have a full political correctness to call the main strain the Chinese coronavirus.

Accordingly, the "Spanish flu" (didn't originate there) a century ago should be retroactively christened the American virus (or Kansas virus).

Channel war-torn Beirut, Lebanon, with Big Pharma in the French Colonial role, reaping untold profits with blood-money while the double-masked laity, the working folks who make meals and walk the dog, huddle in the corners suffering from various stress-induced disorders and bleeding through their skin like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane awaiting crucifixion. Meanwhile, Fred Hutchison and Kaiser-Permanente dole out the vaccine to their biggest cash doners, who fly in on helicopters, while proletarians die in the streets from COVID-19 and the mutated COVID-20 variant like proletarians piling up in "Soylent Green". President Trump should be prosecuted for genocide for allowing this plague to fester and kill millions of Americans while he played golf at Mara Lago and flirted with the caddy. With any good fortune, the Democrats can clean-up this mess the shallow, money-obsessed Republicans have made of our society. Trump should be impeached not only for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but also for murdering his own citizens with negligent contagion policy and suggesting they inject Lysol into their circulatory system to kill the virus. Hopefully he will get corn-balled repeatedly in federal prison, along with Pence the enabler.

So far, the "Murphy Plan" seems to be working as planned.
As in "Murphy's Law" :
If something can go wrong, it will.

Jay's craven politician side is at the wheel in this.

@18 whatever you have to tell yourself but it’s great to know you’re willing to swallow whatever bs Inslee is shoveling because he’s your guy. God forbid we question the great leader or demand accountability. Can’t wait to read your commentary on how Suzi DeVine was misunderstood and completely deserves her promotion to the Biden administration.

@19: "...you’re willing to swallow whatever bs Inslee is shoveling because he’s your guy. God forbid we question the great leader or demand accountability."

Inslee cited the facts upon which he made his decision. That has been explained to you by two headline posts and multiple comments, and yet you continue to make snide personal attacks upon Inslee because he made a decision you happen not to like. In this headline post, Duchin admits he had not seen all of the evidence which Inslee had used, so any reliance on Duchin's opinion is misplaced.

Even if this had been Inslee's first-ever policy announcement on COVID, your attacks upon him would be inexcusable, but Inslee has established a track record of very tough, unpopular decisions on COVID. Unless you believe Washington State's 46-highest rate of cases is some complete coincidence, then we can safely say Inslee's early and tough policies have saved lives and lowered case rates.

He might be making a mistake, but if he is, it is an honest mistake, and based on the evidence. Your constant impugning of his motives, made in contravention of the facts as explained to you here, does not make you a valid judge of someone else's decision-making methods.

@14 pollysexual: Agreed and seconded.

@21 -- BINGO.

@21 this thread is old now so I won't comment beyond this post. It's amazing to me you and the professor are so obstinate in your belief that Inslee's decisions are consistent with what he has said. My personal opinion of him has nothing to do with my comments. My issue is that he set parameters we needed to meet to relax restrictions and then weeks later he changed the parameters not based on actual results but on forecasted results. That makes no sense and is completely inconsistent with his science first mantra. Why is that so hard to acknowledge he is making these decisions partly due to political pressure. That is all I am pointing out and in being inconsistent he gives doubters and haters an opening to question him.

@21 tensor: Thank you and bless you. Spot on, agreed, and thirded after kristofarian @23.

@24 District13Refuse: Dude---seriously. Please keep your word that you won't comment here again. You usually have nothing constructive to add to the comment threads, anyway.
Begone, lil MAGA, before you draw more of Pence's flies as well as the exiled Trumpty Dumpty's shits and giggles from its private hide-y-hole butt-crack in the Florida Duck Die-Nasty swamp.

@24: Yes, you're going to leave without justifying any of the accusations you have made, and without understanding how science and epidemiology work:

"My issue is that he set parameters we needed to meet to relax restrictions and then weeks later he changed the parameters not based on actual results but on forecasted results. That makes no sense and is completely inconsistent with his science first mantra."

The forecasted results are based on the predictive, mathematical models created by epidemiologists to track the spread of COVID. They predict we will reach our goals, and so it is alright to proceed to the next phase. If that turns out to be not true, Gov. Inslee can change the policy, again, as he has many times over the past year.

"Why is that so hard to acknowledge he is making these decisions partly due to political pressure."

OK, he resisted that pressure before the election, and caved to it after he was re-elected, in a massive landslide, to what is likely his final term? THAT is what makes no sense, and you've accordingly not produced any evidence to support it; you've just repeatedly attacked others for not immediately recognizing that you're oh-so-obviously right.