Inslee, Wife Implore Citizens to Forego Holidays, Gatherings

During a short 8 minute address on TVW and via his Facebook page, Gov. Inslee was joined by his wife Trudy to implore residents to postpone holiday and other gatherings this year due to what he said were exploding COVID rates.

Thursday evening he and his wife began by recounting their own Thanksgiving traditions, including football and "turkey sandwiches". Then they launched into a litany of reasons why we need to cancel holidays, unless they're with immediate household family. That includes, said Trudi, birthdays and any other large gatherings.

Inslee used the empty chair argument, saying across the nation 240,000 empty chairs will be at holiday tables because of COVID deaths. He and Trudy said people need to do holidays remotely outside of their family, wear masks and not do birthdays or other gatherings.

Inslee tried to rally "Washin--tonians" by saying the "cavalry is on the way"" because of the vaccines and other treatments. He said holidays NEXT year and Thanksgiving 2021 will be "normal."

Trudy said it was "ok" to not feel normal about what's going on, referring to COVID stress apparently (COVID fatigue( but neither of them addressed that issue. He also threw a dim cloud on top of his comments by saying he was going to announce new moves next week to reportedly deal with what he is calling the "3rd wave".

All told, the short address was met with mixed reactions online. We were watching the emoticon reactions on his Facebook during the address and comments, and they were roughly split with a lot of angry and sad faces being sent up by observers.

We will continue to monitor into next week what his 'plans' are in dealing with this '3rd wave.'