Inslee vs. Inslee

Jay Inslee contradicts himself regarding the Washington reopening plan nearly every time he talks about it. Which Jay Inslee are we to believe follows the science? January Jay? February Jay? April Jay? (Definitely not April Jay—he lies like a rug, as we’re going to see.)

The pattern has been clear. The current Washington Governor likes to repeat the words “data and science” as often as possible, but his decisions have nothing to do with either. We could show this going back from the begin of the COVID lockdowns, but let’s start by looking at the timeline just for 2021 so far. I’ll provide all the documentation along the way so that you can check up on these things for yourself.

November 15^th – A Brave New Lockdown

You will recall that on November 15^th Inslee announced a new level of stay-at-home restrictions in Washington. (here)

There were no metrics announced at this point. There was just the general notion that numbers are all too high.

On December 30^th he announced a 1-week extension to the lockdown with a promise of big, scientific plans to come. (here)

January Jay

That brought us to January 5^th when the first iteration of the Roadmap To Recovery was announced. (here)

The highlights of Roadmap To Recovery were:

Regional approach implemented.

• Decreasing trend in two-week rate of COVID-19 cases per 100K population (decrease >10%)
• Decreasing trend in two-week rate new COVID-19 hospital admission rates per 100K population (decrease >10%)
• ICU occupancy (total — COVID-19 and non-COVID-19) of less than 90%
• COVID-19 test positivity rate of <10%

Any given region was required to meet all four metrics to advance. Here’s what January Jay had to say about those metrics. (here)

Timestamp 30:05

“This does provide a pathway that on a sort of a scientific criteria basis this reopening can happen.”

Oh, good. So we all want to reopen and we’re glad Jay is using the “data and science” to come up with a plan.

But it was not to be. When the evaluation time came, January Jay wasn’t super thrilled with the results of his metrics. So he announced that he was changing the rules to require meeting only 3 of the 4 metrics. (here)

February Jay

On February 11^th Inslee held a press conference to discuss the change he made and was pleased to announce that based on them 5 regions would be moving to phase 2. (here)

Now we had it on good authority from January Jay that science required us to use all four metrics. What did February Jay have to say about the new change? (here)

Timestamp 16:46

“The reason we’ve done it this way is that we’re letting the science guide us in these decisions. We set very clear scientifically oriented guidance of metrics….”

OK, that clears that up. January Jay wasn’t quite following the science. Lucky for us February Jay discovered the actual science and has now got us headed in the right direction.

March Jay

Along comes March.  On March 11^th Inslee announced that the entire state was moving to phase 3. (here)

Surprisingly (eye roll), this came with a whole new set of metrics. The new metrics were:

• For large counties to remain in Phase 3, defined as counties with more than 50,000 residents, they must keep a 14-day average of new COVID cases at or below 200 per 100,000 residents, and a seven-day average of new hospitalizations per 100,000 at five or fewer.
• Smaller counties, those with populations of 50,000 or less, must maintain a 14-day average of new cases at 30 or fewer, and a new seven-day hospitalization average at three or fewer.
• The regional approach was being jettisoned and going back to a county-by-county evaluation.

As you can see by comparing these metrics to the ones above, NONE of previous metrics would be used. This is highly confusing seeing as that both January Jay and February Jay assured us that all the metrics currently sitting in the trash heap were based on only the best science.

March Jay must not have agreed that those metrics were the best science. He threw ALL of them out.

In all fairness, March Jay did not SAY that these changes were the very best of science during his press conference. He did, however, give us a rousing “Play Ball” at the end. (here)

April Jay

Now along comes April Jay, and he brings piles of contradictions with him.

On April 8^th Inslee had a press conference ahead of what had largely been considered a looming reversion back to phase to for a number of counties—it was thought perhaps as many as 8 or more could be headed backwards based on March Jay’s metrics.  Here are some real gems from that April 8^th press conference. (here)

Timestamp 29:16

So we’re going to continue on our course of making decisions based on science.

Timestamp 34:26

The tune here is is is played by the virus not the governor’s office. It’s the virus’s numbers that direct these decisions at this point this is our auto pilot in a sense. We announced what our metrics were and and basically the way this works is it on Monday we will evaluate the most recently available full numbers.

Timestamp 38:12

First off this is not Judgment Day Monday. The score is the score. This score is determined by the covid virus not us. I won’t be making any judgments on Monday. It’ll just be looking at the numbers and we’ve already announced the metrics. I just want to reiterate that this is not sort of a discretionary call by the governor here and the numbers will be the numbers and we will look at them.

Like he has done repeatedly in the past, Inslee pretends that the virus is somehow coming up with all of these decisions, and he is completely hands-off of them. Apparently he thinks that everyone is too stupid to see that he himself is coming up with the metrics—nobody cracked the genetic code of covid and found that it contains a directive that a 200-case-rate means 25% business capacity.

Still, he doubled down on that and repeatedly made clear that there were no judgement calls in any of this. The metrics are the metrics, and April Jay is sticking to them. If Washington counties get hurt by that it is their own fault. He isn’t going to be changing any of the metrics to ensure his desired result. Not him.

The very next day, April 9^th, April Jay announced that he was making a judgement call to change the metrics so as to allow for different results. (here)

The only actual word from the governor about this is the press release on the governor’s web page. He didn’t bother to hold a press conference. Nowhere in the release does April Jay speak to whether THIS new change to the metrics is based on science.

I feel confident that April Jay would tell us that it is.

So who are we to believe? January Jay assured us he had all the science.

February Jay said it wasn’t quite right and tweaked it.

March Jay was excited about baseball season and tossed ALL the previous metrics overboard (while claiming that his new metrics are, in fact, the real slim shady).

April Jay started by backing up March Jay’s metrics and swore not to fiddle with the metrics—right before he fiddled with the metrics.

None of the four Jays are using the same metrics. All four of them claim to possess only the best science. They can’t all be right.

The timeline verifies what we have known all along:

The current Washington governor is not using science to make his decisions. He never has. There is not a study anywhere showing scientific evidence, for instance, that specifically a 200-case-rate should result in specifically 25% business capacity.

All of the Jay’s are making this up as they go along and lying about their justification every step of the way.

Enough. Ignore the Jays. All of them.