St. Louis had almost twice as many COVID-19 cases, but the KC area is spiking now
So why is it that the St. Louis metro area has so far had almost twice the COVID-19 caseload we’ve had in the Kansas City metro — 7,600 to 3,700 — and about three times the deaths, 466 to 167?
Kansas City’s health director, Dr. Rex Archer, thinks that because differences in population totals, density, and the quite similar actions taken by officials on opposite ends of Missouri can’t account for the differences, the most plausible explanation is that the coronavirus just showed up there earlier, undetected in people who were asymptomatic but spreading the virus all the same. (This is why we wear masks, remember?)
“Some of this we may not figure out for another year or two,” Archer said, “but the strongest hypothesis is that they had more hidden cases and were further along in their outbreak” than it first appeared.
Both areas confirmed their first cases on the same day, March 7. St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s shelter-in-place order took effect on March 23, and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’ kicked in on March 24.
Lucas said that St. Louis, where he went to college, “how do I put this nicely, is a little more difficult to govern.” He gives himself a small slice of the credit, too, for the coronavirus gap between the two cities: “The messenger does matter.”
But at the same time, he blames himself for failing to convince Cass and Clay County officials to stick with their stay-at-home orders after “we started to lose the narrative” as the pandemic became more politicized by a president tweeting about “liberating” Michigan and Virginia and Minnesota from stay-at-home orders.
And right now, what’s keeping Lucas from sleeping at night, which has always been a problem for him, he said, is where Kansas City’s numbers go from here.
Archer said that numbers are shooting up locally mostly because of cases in meatpacking plants — one in St. Joe and two under investigation in Kansas City, the Smithfield Foods plant in the Martin City area of Kansas City, and another in Platte County. There will be more testing this week in both of those sites.
As you’ve heard, we’re opening back up anyway, though we haven’t seen anything like the 14 days of declining numbers that were supposed to precede that move.
“We’ve ignored our basic premise of 14 days,” Archer said, and the outbreak in meatpacking plants “is our big concern, just as we’re opening back up and spiking in the other direction.” The wrong direction, he means.
With both Kansas and Missouri aggressively pushing to get back to work no matter what, “we will have a surge,” Archer said, with no caveats at all.
And without nearly enough testing or contact tracing, “you get overwhelmed.” You meaning not just him, but us. All of us.
Again, as always, Archer mentions the zero federal dollars he’s received for new contact tracers. “So do I think we’re in danger of having a huge outbreak before we get the resources” to address it, much less get ahead of it? “Absolutely.”
Does that mean we really should not be reopening right now?
No sense walking down that road, he seemed to say: “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” since closures that drag on have health consequences, too, including a deadly increase in domestic violence. “So we have to try to reopen, but the smartest way we can.”
What can you do? Plenty: If you’re over 60, have a serious health problem or live with someone who fits that description, go nowhere you don’t have to go. “If you’re over 70, you have absolutely no business going out.” And while “businesses need to survive,” Archer said, we really shouldn’t be patronizing those that don’t make employees and customers wear masks. They should provide them, too, if necessary.
As for Kansas City being on a secret FEMA list of “cities to watch” as up-and-coming COVID-19 hotspots, Archer said that with almost 70 cases in local meatpacking plants, of course we got flagged. “All I do is thank the whistleblower, because this is what we should be seeing and haven’t been allowed to see.”
Mayor Lucas agrees: “It has done our country a huge disservice that we can’t get straight information” from the CDC or God knows from White House briefings.
Of course, if everyone who said they didn’t need a nanny or a mommy to keep them safe would just put on a mask, they might know the delight of being proven right. And being proven wrong might let the mayor finally get some sleep.