Long­time scam­mer and noto­ri­ous con man Tim Eyman, a Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, lives only a few miles away from Life Care of Kirk­land, the senior liv­ing provider that has become the face of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in the Unit­ed States. So he ought to be ful­ly aware and mind­ful of the dis­ease’s poten­tial to claim the lives of hun­dreds of thou­sands or even mil­lions of people.

And he ought not to have any objec­tion to the sen­si­ble orders recent­ly issued by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to pro­tect Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from get­ting sick and dying.

This morn­ing, how­ev­er, Eyman appalling­ly revealed that he has no con­cern for the safe­ty and well being of the peo­ple that he claims to so ardent­ly love.

The ini­tia­tive pur­vey­or, who thinks he could do a bet­ter job than Jay Inslee, exhort­ed his net­work of Repub­li­can PCO and right wing activist fol­low­ers to dis­re­gard Inslee’s orders and the advice of pub­lic health author­i­ties, and instead join him at a social gath­er­ing on Whid­bey Island being orga­nized for his benefit.

Wrote Eyman:

LET’S STICK OUR FINGER IN THE EYE OF JAY INSLEE: 251 is the # of patri­ots I hope will join me @ Oak Har­bor today. 

I’m bring­ing a six-pack of Corona!

Every­one is wel­come to join me and Shan­non Williams and Erik Rohde and Car­ol Williams and Michelle Dar­nell and Avery Huf­ford and Rene Hol­lan and Aryeh Rohde and Antho­ny Welti AND SO MANY OTHERS at my Tim4Gov Meet-and-Greet in Oak Har­bor today (Sat, March 14, 3–5 PM, address redact­ed by NPI).

My GPS shows 1 hour 37 min to get there — not bad at all!

Just revolt­ing.

I pray and hope that Eyman’s fol­low­ers have at least enough sense to real­ize that this is one cliff they should not fol­low him off of. It’s bad enough that Eyman has duped so many of them into giv­ing him mon­ey over the years. Now Eyman wants them to put their lives at risk, too. That is an invi­ta­tion they should refuse.

In the event any Eyman fol­low­ers end up read­ing this post: Please under­stand that by con­gre­gat­ing in large groups, you are not “stick­ing it to Jay Inslee,” but rather putting your own lives at risk. You will be the poten­tial los­er if you go to a par­ty with Tim Eyman and end up get­ting exposed to coronavirus.

Don’t think it could­n’t hap­pen to you.

Lind­sey Gra­ham, Ted Cruz, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, and oth­ers have all self-quar­an­tined after being exposed to coro­n­avirus at events like CPAC (the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence) and Trump-host­ed romps at Mar-a-Lago.

COVID-19 is a dis­ease caused by SARS-CoV­‑2, a coro­n­avirus. There is much about both the dis­ease and the virus that infec­tious dis­ease experts do not yet under­stand. But one thing they do know is that the virus is espe­cial­ly dead­ly to old­er peo­ple. Accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, the fatal­i­ty rate in Chi­na for those over eighty is an esti­mat­ed 21.9 per­cent.

A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple in the Repub­li­can base are elder­ly. Many of Eyman’s fol­low­ers are retirees. We know because “Retired” appears in the occu­pa­tion field next to their names in Eyman’s PDC reports.

The ongo­ing tragedy at Life Care of Kirk­land is an exam­ple of what can hap­pen to a com­mu­ni­ty of seniors when they are exposed to coro­n­avirus. Many of the com­mu­ni­ty’s mem­bers have already died and more are like­ly to die.

Act­ing on the advice of sci­en­tists and pub­lic health experts, Gov­er­nor Inslee has been issu­ing a suc­ces­sion of orders intend­ed to ensure that the virus’ spread is checked to the great­est extent pos­si­ble. The over­ar­ch­ing goal is to save lives.

Inslee’s orders — includ­ing his order ban­ning large pub­lic gath­er­ings — have now been copied by gov­er­nors in oth­er states, both Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Republican.

Ohio Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Mike DeWine, for instance, issued an order for­bid­ding pub­lic gath­er­ings larg­er than one hun­dred peo­ple. Said DeWine:

“The pur­pose of these orders is to help Ohio keep social dis­tanc­ing. Our cit­i­zens must not only take steps to pro­tect them­selves, but to also pro­tect others.”

In Wash­ing­ton State, Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can events alike hav­ing been get­ting can­celed or post­poned or con­vert­ed to vir­tu­al events. Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler recent­ly post­poned her cam­paign kick­off and sev­er­al Repub­li­can Par­ty orga­ni­za­tions have pushed back their Lin­coln Day dinners.

Tim Eyman has made it clear he does­n’t want to mod­el good behav­ior and prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing. He not only wants to cam­paign as though there were no pan­dem­ic, he wants oth­er peo­ple to join him in mock­ing the efforts of our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep peo­ple safe. That is not the behav­ior of some­one who should be entrust­ed with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ing at any level.