COVID-19: Local Ripples in Central Virginia
Here are several examples how the growing panic over the COVID-19 coronavirus is impacting Central Virginia, where I live. If you haven’t already observed similar effects, it’s likely you soon will.
I spoke earlier this week with a guy who spends much of his time in the Midwest, doing something for a large cellular company. (He’s my landlord; I have rent and repair-related issues.)
He said he’s got a problem because his company just laid down a travel ban. Meaning, he can’t get from his home here to where that work is unless he drives the better part of two days each way. And that makes no sense.
(Still, he’s willing to work with me on the rent, because my wife and I have a ‘special’ situation: I’m on Social Security and dialysis, which leaves me little time or energy to work. She’s been out of work for a month — but demand for her skill set, as an experienced, fully-equipped home-based customer support person — are about to be in greater demand: As the panic spreads, and more companies/government agencies tell people to work from home, more of those companies are going to need people like my wife to provide technical support on the phone or online.
Getting There is Getting Harder
My landlord, who also said he’ll deal “soon” with the repair issue, said planes are half-empty these days. And many airlines are cutting service. Britain’s Daily Mirror first published a list on March 2 of airlines that were cutting back on flights because of the covid-19 situation. That list was updated on March 10, and it’s a lot longer than the original one.
Because our family’s financial situation is precarious (to say the least!), I’m seeking outside help. One potential helper I spoke with was a pastor at Lynchburg VA’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, from which Jerry Falwell launched Liberty University, now one of the largest and fastest growing institutions of higher education in the country. He told me he ordinarily gets around 45 calls a month from people needing some kind of financial assistance. He expects the call volume to increase soon.
He agreed it’s likely that local companies are going to be struggling in coming weeks, as workers either fall sick or have to be laid off.
(Almost simultaneously to that conversation, Genworth, a large financial company in Lynchburg, ‘asked’ employees to work from home “for the rest of the week,” according to NewsAdvance.com, a Lynchburg-based web site. An employee had come in “with cold-like symptoms,” and as a precaution, the company wanted to allow time for that worker to be tested without putting co-workers at risk.)
When Incomes Drop, So Do Church Contributions
“But consider this,” the pastor said. “When individuals and families’ income is decreased (or cut off), ours (at the church) is, too. So the phone may ring off the hook, but we’ll have to say we don’t have any funds to help you.”
He said he’s noticed donations to his church dropping “over the past month”, and he fears the funds intake will drop further, and possibly faster, in weeks to come.
My in-town dialysis center is run by the University of Virginia. The nurses and technicians there are UVA employees. They were recently notified by UVA that they are prohibited from traveling — not just on company time, but on their own time as well.
That is, of course, not something UVA has a right to demand of its employees. The University’s heart may be in the right place, but that doesn’t justify stepping (hard!) on workers’ individual rights.
More School Closings
Virginia’s governor yesterday declared a ‘state of emergency’ to enable the state to take (unknown) actions to hopefully slow the spread of a seemingly unstoppable disease. This afternoon (3/13), he announced all of the state’s k-12 schools will be closed from Monday 3/26 through at least 3/27.
A 70-something woman in our local Good Will store was complaining yesterday that she is “sick of hearing ‘wash your hands’ all the time”. Other shoppers encouraged her — in a polite southern way, of course — to follow the advice and ‘quit your belly-aching’, as Ann Landers often said.
Despite widespread media reports of shortages in supermarkets of, among other things, toilet paper, I was easily able to choose one of many 12-roll packs off a local Food Lion store this afternoon.
So, the news isn’t all dire.
Paper-Towel Throwing Won’t Work Now
While it remains true, despite what our president would have us believe, it’s likely to be well more than a year before an effective, tried-and-true coronavirus vaccine is in place. And it’s similarly true that when our president confuses the message and contradicts health officials’ real opinions on the state of affairs, everybody loses.
I’ve boiled the issues down to a local level. Increasingly, governors around the country are doing the same — believing, with great justification, that the federal government isn’t doing enough to (1) get the facts out and (2) do what needs to be done to sooth the anxiety of the public.
Your life, my life, is going to change in the coming months. Sadly, we as individuals have little if any control how our government reacts to or deals with this crisis.
But consider this: For those who believe as I do, all that the federal government is not doing, all the mess-ups, the false information coming from the White House — that is, in a sad way, good news, for those of us who want that fool in the White House to be evicted.
Some pundits have long speculated that a disaster could destroy this presidency, and its chance to go on for another four years.
That disaster is at hand. The fool carries on: While announcing he’d declared a “national emergency” to release some $50 billion of federal funds for this fight, he insisted this country “has done a very good job compared to other places” in dealing with this crisis. That is no truer than his recent claims that we’ll have a “great vaccine” “soon”. Experts say that’s unlikely to be so in less than 18 months.
