Week in Review: Omicron, new state laws, and winter weather

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with the Seattle Times Esmy Jimenez, Publicola’s Paul Kiefer, and the Everett Herald’s Isabella Breda.

Omicron has become the dominant Covid-19 variant in Washington state, and over the holidays some people were spending hours in line waiting for a test. The time, however, rapid result tests being sold in stores were largely sold out.

King County will soon have a total of 700,000 Covid tests on hand, after a recent purchase added 400,000 more tests to its supply.

Now the Washington Medical Association is calling on Gov. Jay Inslee to send help to overwhelmed emergency departments and hospitals. The WMA represents more than 12,000 physicians across the state. In a letter to the governor and to Secretary of Health Umair Shah, the association says the health care system is operating at crisis capacity strategies.

Also, the Omicron wave hit the King County jail just as they started to get their vaccination rate up after months of little to no progress. How have we seen cities respond to the needs of their residents?

Some new Washington laws went into effect on New Year's Day. Farm workers are now eligible for overtime, businesses have to stop giving out single use plastics (unless customers request them), and public schools are no longer allowed to use Native American themes for names and mascots, unless the district consults with the appropriate tribe and it approves. What do we make of these changes?

The Northwest got hit with a strong winter storm near the end of the year. The National Weather Service said Seattle's low of 20 degrees on December 26 broke the previous low for the day set in 1948. Bellingham hit a low of 9 — three degrees below the 1971 record for the day. Several weather shelters were opened in Seattle, and thousands of households spent time without power. The record cold also had a strain on social services. How do we feel about the overall response in the region to this particular storm?

A man on Orcas Island is using TikTok to help young people with mindfulness and mental health, and it involves a squirrel. Why is this important?

Speaking of mental health, anosognosia is a neurological impairment that affects an estimated 30% of people with schizophrenia and 20% with bipolar disorder, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, though others believe the percentage may be much higher. Ultimately, anosognosia makes it hard for people with mental illness to have insight into their diagnosis or be aware of it. This is particularly challenging when it comes to treatment, as people experiencing anosognosia often refuse medication or inpatient care. Washington state’s laws make it hard to force a person with mental illness into treatment. Only a designated crisis responder (a trained professional with a degree) can petition for an emergency evaluation or for inpatient treatment, and the bar for that is quite high. How does anosognosia factor into designing laws in Washington around treatment and involuntary psychiatric commitment?

At a point during 2020’s racial justice protests, Seattle police exchanged a detailed series of fake radio transmissions about a nonexistent group of menacing right-wing extremists. The radio chatter was about members of the Proud Boys marching around downtown Seattle, some possibly carrying guns, and then heading to confront protesters on Capitol Hill. The Seattle Times broke the story Wednesday, noting that the city's Office of Police Accountability stated this was an improper “ruse,” or dishonest ploy, that exacerbated a volatile situation. But it appears unlikely that anyone will lose their jobs or pay over the incident. The two employees who ordered and supervised the misinformation effort have already left the department, and the remaining four officers identified in taking part in the chatter were only blamed for using poor judgment, with no real discipline involved. Why are the current SPD officers only guilty of bad judgment unworthy of discipline?