Here’s another in the “Outside My Window” series, chronicling life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Summer in the City
Here’s the Link to the Lovin’ Spoonful Song
The summer of 2020 has been hot. We’ve had twenty-two days over ninety degrees in the past two months, and we’ve had plenty of rain to go with it. That’s the daily double; it’s hot as Hell, and humid too. And the grass is growing so fast it’s got to be cut twice a week. There’s no way to avoid this long, hot summer. Can’t go to the movies, my parents’ cure for the heat. The theaters are closed. Even driving the Jeep with the top off can be too much. If you have to stop, it’s like being on a pan in the oven.
I think the heat is affecting peoples’ outlook on the world. Things are already tense: the COVID-19 crisis continues, with growing numbers of infections and hospitalizations. But when your hot and sticky, it seems easy to buy into all of the fancy statistical “figuring”. Given enough numbers, folks can find miniscule percentages of people who might “really” be at risk of COVID-19. And if you believe that the virus isn’t a threat to you, then all of the “suggested” regulations, masks, social distancing and the like, chafe like a scratchy, grass covered t-shirt in the afternoon sun.
Colors
Of course, cooler heads get it. The virus hasn’t gone away. Ohio has instituted a “color code” system by county, warning the state when things are getting bad. Code Yellow – Level 1 – means that there is exposure, but things aren’t bad. Level II – Code Orange – the exposure is increasing. Level III – Red – there’s a very high level of exposure. And then there’s Level IV – Code Purple – severe exposure and time for folks to shelter in place. No county in Ohio is at the Purple level yet, but there are a lot of them in Code Red.
Of course the more people in a county, the more likely there’s viral transmission. So it should be no surprise that the major cities: Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, are all in Code Red. So are some of the smaller ones: Portsmouth, Marion, and Lima. And since Columbus has always been a “spread out” town, it really shouldn’t be a surprise either that some of the counties surrounding the core Franklin County are Code Red too: Fairfield County and here in Licking County.
But Orange, Red and Purple aren’t the only colors that influence those counties. It’s should be no surprise that most of the Code Red counties are also “Blue”: Democratic counties. And that the Code Yellow and Orange Counties are almost all “Red”: Republican. So built into the COVID-19 infection is political division. If you live in Muskingum County, where the big city is Zanesville, it’s easy to see the epidemic as someone else’s problem. There’s not much impact there, and “all the fuss” seems to be so overblown.
Dis-Information
Of course it doesn’t help that some politicians and social media have waged a campaign of dis-information, designed to raise doubts about the “official” scientific sources. This week alone, far-right media published a series of “experts in white coats” touting discredited drugs that could “treat” COVID-19. It went “viral” as folks are desperate for quick and easy answers to a threatening disease. But “viral videos” won’t make the virus go away either – so everyone just gets even more hot and sweaty and less trusting of the voices of reason coming out of the state capital in Columbus.
Desperate also is the word for folks thinking about public schools. They are desperate for the schools to open, desperate for their kids to have a “normal” life, desperate for childcare so they can go back to work. But Code Red County schools are planning on “online” learning. So kids will be at home, and parents are stuck with figuring out how to supervise their kids and their kids’ education, at least for the foreseeable future.
Hotheads
Here in Licking County, we are the source of the “itch”. The western part of the county, adjacent to the urban Columbus area, is heavily populated and Code Red. The eastern part of the County, more rural, is less impacted. But since it’s a County system, with the numbers in the west, Licking County as a whole is “Code Red”. So the county schools are faced with a dilemma. The ones on the eastern side are planning on going to “regular” five-day a week in-person school. The ones on the west side are pressured to open “regular” school, but are likely to end up “online”. And no one is going to be happy.
And all of this will come to a head in the next two weeks. Regardless of all of the planning, spacing desks and partitioning buses, schools are going to have to make a final decision. Go or not go: knowing that the community is going to question every call. If you don’t trust Washington, or Columbus, or even Newark (the county seat), why would you trust any leadership at all? If kids can play Little League Baseball and practice for high school football, why can’t they just go to school?
So August is likely to be even hotter. If the temperature outside doesn’t break ninety, the hot heads in town will provide all the heat we need.
