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How coronavirus spread across Massachusetts
By adamg on Sun, 05/31/2020 - 12:28pm
The Globe provides an extensive chronology of Covid-19's spread across Massachusetts - it wasn't just that Biogen meeting at the Long Wharf. The article raises the question of why this medical Mecca got harder hit than anywhere save New York and New Jersey, doesn't really answer it, but also raises the question of what if Gov. Baker hadn't gone on a family ski trip to Utah in March, but instead stayed here and shut things down a week earlier.
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Comments
Paywalled.
But I'm sure it's informative. Maybe I can read it at the library.
Oh, wait ...
Easy
Copy the address to the article, clear all your browser’s cache, close and re-open browser, paste in the address, hit enter, repeat every time you want to read an article. Nobody wants to read most of their watered down articles anyways.
Worth every penny of my
Worth every penny of my subscription.
Not just informative
It's infuriating. Specifically the accounts of front-line medical staff catching some of the earliest cases but being unable to get approval to test the infected patients.
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If you don't have access, here are the first 3 paragraphs from the Globe:
This is right out of a scary movie script. MA Dept. of Health dropped the ball.
Oh no way
A woman got discredited despite having intellectual credentials? I don't believe it.
Free through your library's website
Many libraries in Massachusetts have an online subscription to the Globe through ProQuest. Now is a great time for you to explore the free resources available to you at your library. The entire article is available, although the images are not.
The online version must have been different
The print version, which was very well written, didn’t criticize the Baker family trip at all, but did note the early return of Governor Baker as a sign that things had suddenly turned serious.
The tone of the article was set at the beginning, highlighting not the Biogen conference or the UMass/Boston student from Wuhan, but rather a doctor from Pittsfield and her noticing what could be community spread yet wasn’t able to get the testing done to tell for certain until it was too late. It’s easy to figure out faults in hindsight, but the testing aspect has been the difference between good and bad outcomes in areas afflicted by COVID around the world.
Although we get the Sunday paper ...
I read the article online last night. Maybe it didn't criticize Baker directly, but it certainly raised questions about how prepared DPH was (especially when it came to testing) and noted we were far from first in declaring a state of emergency, and an astute reader would also have noticed the implied question of how we could have wound up getting hit harder than most other states.
The European Connection
February Vacation means a lot of travel. Most other regions do not have a February Vacation - they have a single spring break in March. A lot of people from Massachusetts travel to Europe over February Vacation (including Italy) to visit family, to take a family vacation and there are numerous school trips to Italy and Spain for high school language students.
Link to Globe via ProQuest Database
Most Massachusetts residents, so long as they are library cardholders, have access to the ProQuest datatbase, which posts full text of the Boston Globe, usually within 48 hours of the Globe's on article appearing.
ProQuest access to local libraries is provided by the Mass Board of Library Comissioners (MBLC)
Sample link tto the Globe via the Lynnfield library:
Near the page bottom are links to the New York Times, Boston Globe & Worldcat.
If you don't have a libaray card linked online, the MBLC site will prompt you for a local, valid Mass library card.
Link directly to the ProQuest Text: