The FRONTLINE Interviews

Jay Inslee

Governor (D-WA)

Jay Inslee is a Democrat who has served as governor of Washington state since 2013.

Following is the transcript of an interview conducted by FRONTLINE filmmaker Miles O'Brien on April 10, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Jay Inslee

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Late January — this is the timeframe when Patient One had come to public knowledge.A thirty-five-year-old man who came in from Wuhan.And there was a sense in the community at that time, I think, among epidemiologists, et cetera, that it had been fairly well contained.At that point, you were, and others were saying that risk seemed low.Take me back to that time and tell me what you were thinking about, why you assessed it that way.

Well, I'm not sure I would describe it as thinking it was low.What I — what we were thinking is we were very much on top of it because we did very extensive contact tracing with all of the contacts that the person had who was the first patient.And we felt good about the containment strategy we had at that time because it was very vigorous and precise, and did everything epidemiologically that you could ask a public health system to do.And fortunately, he recovered.We were really happy about that.And so we thought we were, in some sense, doing everything we could at that moment.Subsequent genetic research suggested that there was some infection going on that was not visible to us because people were not experiencing actual symptoms.And what we have subsequently found, I think, is that we had higher infection rates than we might have thought of, because they were asymptomatic.People just were not going to the hospital.They were, if anything, having something they may have thought of was the flu.And so there was probably more infection earlier than we actually were aware of.So that was the course.And subsequently we've been relatively aggressive.And as a result, I think we've had some bending of the curve.So that's been good.

So let's flash forward then.I'm curious at the moment when you realized you had a bigger problem on your hands, that you had community spread.Was it the Life Care event that got your attention the most?

Well, I think that the trigger for the biggest alarm is community spread in general.So it was a combination of the event at the nursing home, which obviously had such a fast proliferation and so many fatalities.But it was more than that.It was the idea that there was broad community spread that was not just from a visitor from Wuhan, that this was spreading throughout our own community with our own individuals.The combination of those two things obviously allowed us to move forward.Now, it also allowed the public to be accepting of moving forward.And that's an important part about this.You have to have public acceptance if you're going to have some success in this.So we reached a level of understanding in the public about why these measures were necessary.And that's part of this.You know, you can't be out there in the parade with nobody behind you.And what happened was, is there was enough public understanding of this, that came from both the fatalities and the nursing home, and the number of infections that had been recognized and diagnosed, that allow us to move forward with very, you know, quite aggressive measures to do social distancing.

So it's interesting because you have to get people to come along.And sort of, it forces you to make decisions probably a little later than you would — than science would dictate, right?Is that one way of putting it?

Yeah, I think that that is to some degree true.I think you're aiming for a sweet spot where you are ahead of, you know, maybe the broad public in the sense that you have an understanding of the epidemiology of these curves, but not so far ahead that you lose contact.It's sort of like bike racing.You know, you the leader never wants to get so far ahead that the peloton, you lose touch with them.So I think that that is true.And we are not a totalitarian society either, we’re a robust democracy that respects individual rights.

But I do think with all of that kept in mind, we have had success bending the curve.We have not thankfully experienced the horrific breakdown or potential breakdown of the hospital systems as other states have seen.We have always retained a healthy surplus of hospital capacity so that we weren't in imminent risk of people losing their lives in the hallways.And so we've been on the very fortunate side of that curve.And I think the proof is quite compelling that the reason for that is because we were early in responding to this, starting with orders, well, starting with public dissemination of information, which was very important, to prepare the groundwork so that people would accept these orders.That was the beginning of our efforts.And then starting with stopping, by orders, large gatherings.Then moving to closures of schools.Then moving to, essentially, total social distancing and closing everything but essential businesses.So that was a stair-step process, relatively rapid, and I think the proof suggests it was very timely.

So let's go to early March now, and this right around the time you declared a state of emergency.And it was also right around the time that the president called you a snake.At that point, did you get the sense that you, as governor, and the state of Washington were sort of on their own and the federal cavalry was not coming?

Yes, but we didn't ever depend on that leadership coming out of the White House, so it's not something that we were surprised by.We always knew that we would have to lead the charge, given the president's reluctance to really exercise leadership on this.And we sort of knew that he had an intent of downplaying what was an emerging problem, that, you know, could only be explained by someone who had their eye on the Dow Jones rather than an eye on the epidemiological curve.So, it was not a shock.It was extremely disappointing and disheartening.It has made our jobs of Republican governors and Democratic governors much harder to get the public to understand this.And so that has made it more difficult.

But we have been vigorous, both Republican and Democratic governors leading our communities to some success.And we have had Republican leadership.I want to point that out.You look at Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio, who was very early in this and courageous, frankly, in some of the things he did.So there's been some good bipartisan response, as there has in my state where, by and large, we've had good bipartisan support for my order in our legislature, for instance.So there is good work going on in the states, and we've seen to it to make sure that that's the case and have sort of ignored some of the background noise out of the White House.

So the state of Washington was at the forefront of this idea of social distancing.I'm curious what data you had that supported that decision.

Well, we have great public health folks.John Wiesman, the leads are our health system, Kathy Lofy, Scott Lindquist.These are really good epidemiologists.We're also very fortunate because we have some of the most admired geneticists and epidemiologists here in Washington State at the University of Washington, at the Institute for Health Metrics, for instance, who are now are sort of worldwide followed on a daily basis of their modeling.So we're very fortunate to have a very deep sense of information and data available to us.And we, you know, we consult that at least daily and perhaps hourly, and that has guided our decisions.And so far, the decisions that have been guided by that data have shown, you know, some considerable success.So we're very pleased by that.

So the modeling, then, was pretty crucial for you.

Yes.Both from showing what can happen with social distancing.Now, we've seen success in other places, obviously in China, to see some success in that regard.We've looked at other countries for some of their work. That has worked in South Korea and Singapore and Hong Kong.We are intensely interested in some of their strategies.We had early high levels of testing.We knew some of that was very important in South Korea.So we'd focused on as much testing as we could.And for the first several weeks, we actually had the highest per capita testing in the United States.I think New York has surpassed is now a little bit in that regard.But those those events also showed how important we need to go forward.

By the way, just before we leave this discussion, this is the number one challenge for the United States right now, is we need a huge ramp up of our testing capacity — even greater than was needed early in the outbreak.And the reason is, is that as we want to rebuild our economy and come out of this, we have to have additional testing so that, you know, every time a child gets sick, we don't have to close down a whole school.And if people come back to work, we can test them to make sure that they are safe.And that's why we are intentional in building our own testing capability in our state.But we really need more leadership out of the White House to use the Defense Production Act, and other measures, to build up the industrial capacity, to provide the test kits, to provide the analytic systems.I very much appreciated discussing this with Vice President Pence.He's been very open to us and I’ve had many conversations with him, which I appreciate.But we need the president to help ignite a national mobilization of the manufacturing base of the United States.That is absolutely imperative, so that we can restart our economy.

The president has suggested that this is something the states and the governors should be responsible for.It's not necessarily the federal government that is supposed to handle these kinds of things.What do you say to that?

Well, I think it's very unfortunate.And I liken it to, I mean, others have talked about — in fact, the surgeon general, who I admire, he has done some good work — he was talking about how this is our Pearl Harbor moment.Last weekend, I heard him say that.And I mean, can you imagine if on December 8th, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had given a speech saying, good luck, Connecticut building those battleships, you know, we’ll be right behind you?

You know, the federal government has unmatched capability of mobilizing the largest manufacturing base in the world.That still remains the case today.And we can very much use him to do that by use of the Defensive Production Act much more rigorously, particularly when it comes to this testing need.Look, we need five, 10 times as much testing capability that we have today.There has been some start of that.We'd appreciated the Abbott Company developing onsite testing.That's great.But we only got 100 hundred kits when we need, you know, a thousand, ten thousand.And we do bring more companies into this production supply chain, even companies who have not made these products in the past.And the president could help in this regard.

I think that if I could suggest the fundamental problem is here is I remember hearing the president saying that he didn't think that he wanted to be a shipping clerk.And frankly, the shipping clerks — we call them the quartermaster corps in the military — that's how you win wars.That's how we got the D-Day in the Normandy invasion to be successful, because we had a very good quartermaster corps.We did have a tremendous logistics capability.And this is not a diminished role, it should be an exalted role right now.And I know governors are trying to play that role as best we can across the country.We're doing things together as much as we can.I know Governor Newsome has done some really progressive things to try to develop on this, and others across the country.But we could use some presidential help.

I’ve heard Mayor Durkan here refer to it as the ”Hunger Games,” in the sense that you’ll all end up bidding against each other for scarce resources.How real is that?

Well, it's very real.You know, we're searching the world for every potential warehouse that have any of this personal protective equipment.That has been a constant struggle and we are bidding against each other.And I'm sure that the suppliers are having a field day bidding the price up while states are bidding against one another.It would be much more efficient, economically and otherwise, if the federal government was playing a more vigorous role in that regard.By the way, we have made some progress on the PPE.We now have eighty five million pieces of PPE in our supply chain coming into Washington state.So we have had some progress on that.

But I want to reiterate, we have to be more than just a purchaser of these products in the United States.We have to build up our own capacity to build these things.I'll give you an example.The vast majority of the swabs are today produced in Italy, in fact, in the Lombardy region where the center of the outbreak is.We just can't rely on foreign sources now.We've got to develop our own in the months to come so that we can reopen our economy, and we can test people as we as we need to.That will only be capable if we if we jumpstart a huge mobilization of the capacity of the United States.So we need that national response.

So you've had some success bending the curve…It appears from the data that you're on the downside of the curve or approaching that.Do you think you dodged a bullet and are you ready to declare victory?

Certainly not.Not by a thousand miles.We don't actually know we're at the peak yet.So you're a little more sanguine than we are.There has been a reduction of the curve fairly dramatically, but we are not totally confident we're at the peak of our losses today.And the most dangerous element in my state today is the virus of complacency, because we have to be just as diligent for the next several weeks as we were the last several weeks.I was in an interview this morning and somebody asked me what is what is the hardest day—what has been the hardest day so far?I would say it's today.Because today, all leaders have the biggest challenge to make sure people understand that as the sun comes up and the daffodils come out, we've got to double our efforts.Because you have—you can have as many fatalities as the curve comes down as when the curve was going up.And if you relax too soon, the curve just can rebound and start right back up again…The Institute for Health Metrics actually did a chart on this a couple days ago, which shows that if we stopped in Washington state, our social distancing in the near future, that curve just starts to bounce right back up again.And we're better a state than that.So we have to be very convincing, and we should be convincing, because the truth is that we will save many, many more people if we continue our efforts.Right now, my order goes through May 4th, and that is an epidemiological necessity.And so that's what we're working on today.

…I know you're thinking about how to reopen.One of the things that comes up if you're using the war analogies, is it's often harder to win the peace.And I wonder how much you're concerned about that.And then if you could embed in that, how much you think what has happened here is an example for the rest of the nation.Are you kind of the canary in the coal mine?

Well, look, I think some of the things we did early, were successful.I think that our ability to win public acceptance have been vastly successful.We've had high compliance with our order.And we've bent the curve probably as much or more than in any other state.So we've been very fortunate in that regard.But our success should not diminish the efforts of others who have not been as fortunate.We may have had some things that broke our way that we may not even understand right now.And I just want to thank all the governors who are working so hard in their individual circumstances, and our hearts are with them.We wanted to help them.We sent back 400 ventilators and an army field hospital so that they can go to New York and Louisiana and other places.And I'm glad Washingtonians recognized our national commitment in that regard.

Look, I feel that we are going to get through this.And I think the biggest challenges I've talked about is if we get an adequate testing regime so that we can reopen our businesses and our schools, and can give customers and parents confidence about that, I think things are going to go well.But it is dependent on our ability to develop that testing protocol.So that's what I'm committed to and I hope everybody enjoys their families, maybe electronically for the next couple of weeks.But that's gonna be a good thing coming out of this.

And lessons learned for the nation?Do you have them?

Be able to have confidence in your ability to weather a temporary squall.Good mariners do that.They recognize storms are temporary and if we do that, we'll get through this together.

OK.Thank you, Governor.I appreciate your time here.

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