Well when our federal government basically screws the pooch it's up to individual states to work together to limit the spread. And since most of the state governments seem to not really care about the health of their citizens, it makes sense that there would be small groups of states that do. Honestly I assumed that if the outbreak got really bad the PNW would eventually secede from the union because the federal government wasn't providing much aid. But this is a lot better than that.