Case in Point

COVID-19, what a difference a week makes

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This week I was supposed to bring my favorite column of the year to our readers. This week I was supposed to print my NCAA tournament bracket for all to see — and mock!

Yet in this COVID-19 world in which we now live, normal is gone. For now.

The NCAA tournaments — both men’s and women’s, along with all other conclusions to collegiate winter sports, are just a few of the things being canceled or postponed right in front of our eyes.

The NBA and NHL are gone. MLB baseball has been postponed. The Masters golf tournament — the biggest major of the year — has been postponed.

From a sports standpoint — and I’m a sports guy — everything has been taken away. If you had told me a month ago that this would happen, at any point, I’d have called you crazy.

Yet that’s where we live. Crazy times with very serious consequences.

Sports are just the tip of a large iceberg. It’s trickled down to our own backyards. Schools are closed for four weeks around us. Activities and sports K-12 have also been canceled — all through April 12.

We have been trying to keep up all we can with a very small staff here with regard to the novel coronavirus. Last week, we provided readers with more than two full pages on COVID-19 reporting. It continues this week with the story of Andrew Crooks, a Wilton man I went to school with who has traveled the world and lives in China very near where this virus started infecting humans.

Please read his account (page 1) of living within a COVID-19 quarantined world. When I got his email last week and read it carefully, I immediately thought there’d be no way I could fathom it happening here.

What a difference a week makes. Things change so rapidly, it’s impossible to keep up.

It started last week when I attended the Wilton school board meeting March 11. That was the day our March 12 issue hit newsstands and on the front page was a map courtesy of the CDC showing which states had reported COVID-19 cases. By the morning the paper hit the stands, the map was very out of date. Superintendent Joe Burnett called it “uncharted territory” in an interview with me.

Call him Captain Obvious but he couldn’t have been more right.

He made the warning then that parents should start thinking about what to do with their children if schools were to shut down. We didn’t even have time to get that in the paper before it happened.

That’s where we now live until we can see this new virus sort of run its course a bit. The scariest thing of all to me is the testing portion.

I sat in several meetings last week with elected officials, plus talked to school and city officials. Each time I would ask a very rudimentary question — If I want or need to be tested, where do I go?

I was almost laughed at literally when I brought it up at the Wilton political forum March 14, yet interestingly I was never given an answer.

Call my doctor, they all say. Duh … That’s not the point. The point is the lack of testing available in this country. The urging from the World Health Organization this week to countries around the world — “Test, test, test.”

If I went to my local clinic right now could I get a test? If I went to my nearest hospital in Muscatine, could I get a test? We know the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics have test kits and a special quarantined area to do so.

What I’m finding in my own research is that if I haven’t traveled outside the country, especially to other places that have it worse than us, it’s harder to get tested. If I haven’t been in contact with someone who has it, it’s harder to get tested.

To me that just sounds like a better breeding ground for this thing to spread. And it will, rapidly. I next worry about the amount of hospital beds and medical staff to take care of those that will need that kind of care.

We are living in very unexplainable and interesting times. Take these four weeks seriously folks. It’s not a month-long spring break. I say go out and live your life, but with precaution. We do need to avoid crowds. We do need to practice social distancing.

We’re taking those steps here at our office. We’re cleaning high traffic areas much more and are urging customers to stay away and visit their health care provider if they feel ill. We also urge customers to use our mail slot to drop off information/payments more frequently.

Our small towns will rally together as much as they are able when it comes to area businesses. I’m already seeing it via social media posts. Stay tuned and stay informed!

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