The Governor
I’m listening to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his daily press conference. He’s personal, he’s empathetic, and he is organized. He is letting the people of New York, and now America, know what the status of his “hot spot” state is. He is telling us how many people are in the hospital, how many are on ventilators, how many are dying. And most importantly, where his state is “on the curve”, and what his citizens can do to make things better.
“We didn’t lose anybody because we couldn’t provide care. We lost people we couldn’t save,” he said.
His words are deadly serious, and he is convincing. And though he is telling us dire news, more deaths, he is also leading New Yorkers, and really the nation, “…through this, together”.
Blue and Red
COVID-19 spreads fastest in the tightest environment. It is no surprise then, that the densely packed region around New York City, and Seattle, and Los Angeles, and soon New Orleans and others, are the areas that are most impacted by the virus. That it also happens that those are “blue” regions, Democratic areas; isn’t really a surprise. Is there an urban area in America that is “Trump Country”?
That last sentence just led me into a research reverie. Name a city in America that is “Trump Country”? I found it – you can’t do “cities,” you have to do “metro-areas”. By metro area Birmingham, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Cincinnati and Nashville “metros” are the top “Trump” vote getters in 2016. They range from 58% in Birmingham to 55% in Nashville. But that was the metro – the cities themselves (City Lab) were Democratic.
“Trump Country” is by definition not the city. “Trump Country” is the suburbs, and the long stretches of highway between urban centers in America. You can see the Trump flags and MAGA signs along the interstates, and flapping in the small towns and villages of our nation. One’s across the street and down the road here in Pataskala. They are not the “first strike” areas for the corona-virus.
Once in a Lifetime
COVID-19 should not be a political issue. We have a nation in crisis, under a threat we haven’t faced in three generations. It was back in 1918, when we were unsure of the mechanisms of infection and disease that we had the last world pandemic to deal with. It was the Spanish flu then, and 675,000 Americans died. The percentage was 675000 out of 106 million, or a little more than one half of one percent of the population. That’s six out of one thousand. But it was near six times more than the number of Americans killed in World War I at the same time. It would be over two million dead today.
So we have only a vague collective memory of this kind of plague. And it’s easy, sitting out in “Trump Country”, to think that it’s someone else’s problem. Here in Licking County there are numbers too: fifty-seven confirmed cases, nine hospitalized, two dead. Small when compared to New York: easy to ignore, or worse, to blame. Is the corona-virus crisis creating just one more “Blue v Red” division in our nation? We now are finding that the current epidemic is impacting African-Americans at a greater rate than white Americans, is that just one more wedge prying us apart?
The American Way
It’s not that here in Pataskala we aren’t following “the rules”. We are socially distanced, isolated from our neighbors and community. The street conversations now take place from either side, voiced across the stretch, rather than a huddle in the middle. The five in the morning traffic is way down, people working from home, or perhaps not working at all. And the kids, all pent up in their homes “going to school” in a way that seems an awful lot like ten tons of homework, are for the most doing their part. Not many “groups” wandering, even the “Huffy bike” gang can’t be found.
But you wonder if the blue and red difference in the emergency might just wedge our national divide wider. It would be easy for one side or the other to claim “righteousness”. It might not even be from the campaigns, but maybe worse, just a social media trend.
Let’s hope not. America is in one-time a lifetime crisis, hopefully the last of this kind. There will be enough blame to pass around once it’s over, but for now, we should share in the suffering and pain of our fellow citizens.
It’s the American thing to do.
