How Seattle acted fast and shook off coronavirus, while New York descended into chaos

It was February 22 and a tropical themed party was in full swing at a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle. Dozens of guests wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis packed into the living room as the cocktails flowed.

Three days later Elizabeth Schneider, 37, one of the guests, started to feel sick. Her temperature soared to 39.4C. But it was the very early days of the coronavirus outbreak, so she just went to bed.

"I just thought I had flu," said Miss Schneider, 37, a bioengineer. "Then I discovered on Facebook a number of people at the party had got sick, about 15. Some went to the doctor but got told they had flu. Doctors weren't testing for coronavirus. They didn't realise it was spreading."

At the time Miss Schneider became ill - with what later turned out to be coronavirus - the omens for Seattle were not good.

It had recorded the first US case on January 21, a man who had recently returned from Wuhan, China.

There was a shortage of testing kits, confusion about symptoms, and a widespread view among politicians that the virus would simply "go away".

But despite being the original epicentre in the US, Seattle has since experienced nothing like the tsunami of deaths and desperation that later befell New York City.

To date, less than 500 people have died in Seattle and its surrounding suburbs. In New York City, the figure is over 13,000.

Roughly one in every 5,000 people in Seattle has died. One in every 650 New Yorkers has perished.

Seattle is now so far down the road to recovery that it has sent 400 ventilators, which it never needed, to New York.

There are significant differences between the two cities. New York is larger, with a more dense population, and more travellers passing through. But Seattle had the distinct disadvantage of being first to face the crisis.

What is clear is that Seattle acted remarkably swiftly to impose restrictions. Its politicians, and private companies, never second-guessed public health officials.

"It [imposing restrictions] goes against everything we do in every other part of our jobs," said Seattle's mayor Jenny Durkan. "We're causing enormous economic and individual pain. But, for that, we avoid the greatest pain, the collapse of our hospital system, and more and more people dying from the virus."

The mayor recently had a giant flag raised on top of the Space Needle, the city's iconic tower. It said: "#We Got This Seattle".

Seattleites are inclined to agree that their leaders did indeed get it right.

"At the beginning of the stay-at-home we had a little panic buying toilet paper, hand sanitiser, flour, the basics, but from what I saw that was pretty minimal compared to elsewhere," said Miss Schneider.

"Of course everyone was nervous, but there was a general sense that the authorities were handling it appropriately."

Miss Schneider was diagnosed after doctors at the University of Washington state, conducting the Seattle Flu Study, ignored an order from the federal government to stick to looking for flu.

Instead, they adapted their test to recognise coronavirus. Miss Schneider and others at the party sent in nasal swabs, which were positive.

The Seattle Flu Study doctors have since been hailed "heroes" within the medical community for discovering the extent of the problem early.

By February 29 Seattle had confirmed the first coronavirus death in the US, a man in his 50s. A deadly outbreak was also underway at the city's Life Care Center nursing home, which would eventually take at least 35 lives.

That day, Seattle held its first coronavirus press conference. It took a very different course to New York, and the White House, in the way it communicated with the public.

The news was delivered, not by a politician, but by Dr Jeffrey Duchin MD, Seattle's chief health officer, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert.

Peering over brown reading glasses, perched on the end of his nose, his words were calm and measured.

Dr Duchin remembers wondering if people would accept the unvarnished truth - that it was time to move very rapidly to social distancing, cancelling sports events, and closing schools and businesses. It hadn't been done in living memory.

"Social distancing measures have significant negative social and economic impacts," he said. "They had not been used in the United States in over 100 years. [But] looking back, we think the decisions made were appropriate."

That is something of an understatement. The actions saved many lives.

Seattle recommended social distancing on March 4, only five days after the first death. On the same day Microsoft, at the request of the city, told its 42,000 employees to work from home. Amazon followed suit.

A week later large events were ordered closed. Schools were shut two days later, bars and restaurants four days after that. Many Seattleites had already heeded advice from Dr Duchin and were staying home anyway.

Even more extreme measures followed. A ban on using park benches was enforced by fitting them with so-called "hostile architecture" - knobbly planks of wood - to make sitting uncomfortable. Picnic tables were wrapped in tape.

By contrast, early in the crisis, both Donald Trump and Bill de Blasio, the Democrat mayor of New York, encouraged people to get on with their daily lives, suggesting the problem would soon be over.

They also fronted press conferences - in Mr Trump's case freewheeling ones lasting up to two hours - which sometimes left citizens unsure of what they were supposed to do.

In New York City the first coronavirus case was recorded on March 1, only a day after Dr Duchin announced the first death in Seattle.

But Mr de Blasio publicly called Seattle's decision to close schools a "mistake".

As late as March 15, Mr de Blasio hosted a press conference, telling New Yorkers: "If you love your neigbourhood bar, go there now." The following day he was spotted going to the gym.

On March 20 Andrew Cuomo, the New York state governor, who had initially promised the virus would not be "as bad as in other countries", closed non-essential businesses and instituted social distancing.

According to Dr Tom Frieden, former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of deaths in New York could have been reduced by up to 80 per cent had restrictions been imposed a week or two earlier.

In the end it was New York that became the new US epicentre, desperately seeking ventilators as its hospital system struggled to cope with the flood of patients. A US Navy ship was brought in, mass graves were dug, and bodies dumped in trucks.

As New York continues to suffer, the peak of cases has long passed in Seattle, and thoughts are turning to reopening.

But Dr Duchin worries it will happen too fast. He opposes the idea of re-opening smaller, less affected counties near Seattle.

And he believes states like Georgia, Texas and Florida, hurrying to get back to normal, could "reseed" Seattle, causing a second wave “two to three times" worse than the initial outbreak.

"That's like having a peeing section in the swimming pool," he said. "It doesn't stay where it started."

Miss Schneider, meanwhile, has become the first coronavirus survivor to donate blood plasma in a new trial at the University of Washington. Her antibodies may help many who are sick.

She said: "It's extremely important for survivors to do this. For some people this could be the difference between life and death."