Trooper Eric Gunderson died from complications as the result of contracting COVID-19 while at a training conference in Champions Gate, Florida.
Trooper Gunderson was the technology liaison in the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and a member of the SWAT Team. His pioneering work with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) had been chronicled in media stories across the nation. He had traveled around the country representing the Washington State Patrol for UAV usage to shorten the time of road closures during collision investigations. It is on one of these trips that he contracted COVID.
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COVID-19, a flu-like virus, originated in Wuhan, China. Worth a mention, the Chinese Government had a biological research facility in that very province. At this point, it was widely held that COVID-19 was a bat-coronavirus and the first case was discovered in Wuhan in Oct. 2019.
On Dec. 31, 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization of pneumonia cases in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China, with an unknown cause. Jan 7, 2020 Chinese authorities identify a new type of coronavirus (called novel coronavirus or nCoV).
Despite deaths and an entire Chinese Province(Hubei) quarantined by the Chinese Government, the World Health Organization(WHO) simply declares a global public-health emergency. Despite this serious understatement, on January 31st, President Trump bans foreign nationals from entering the US if they were in China within the prior two weeks. Despite a large public outcry of racism, this move likely saved 1000's of American lives, it would later be deemed.
After a full blown global infection, and an entire country being declared on 'Lockdown'(Italy), on March 11th, WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic. This same day, President Trump bans all travel from 26 European countries. On Mar. 13th, a US national emergency is declared over the novel coronavirus outbreak.
On Mar. 23rd, New York City confirms 21,000 cases, making it the biggest epicenter of the outbreak in the US. On Mar. 31, more than 1/3 of humanity is under some form of lockdown. On Apr. 2nd, the world passes one million COVID-19 infections.
On April 7th, roughly 95% of all Americans are under lockdown, as 42 states issue stay-at-home orders. The entire American economy has ground to a halt. Congress passed laws awarding trillions in grants, loans and other types of assistance to the American working population and businesses.
