What Looms for a Small Town?

It’s been almost a month since I’ve posted to the blog. I’ve been busy living life, like most of you, I’m sure. But I’m becoming restless. Again, like most of you.

Our most recent trip took place last September. We spent a week in Key West. If you can stand the heat and humidity, early September is a good time to visit. We flew into Ft. Lauderdale and drove south through the Keys on the Overseas Highway. We met my wife’s brother and his son which provided an added good time.

One year ago just this week, we returned from a nine-day hiking trip in Provence. Provence was a bit of a surprise. Even though we read about the area beforehand, and we mapped out an interesting town-to-town walk, we were surprised by what we found. Provence is semi-arid to arid. Lots of agriculture, but a ton of drip irrigation too. We walked through more cherry and olive groves than I can count. We walked up and down more hills than we did in the Cotswolds. The walking paths were not up to the Cotswold standard and the footing on loose rock made parts of the climb and descent both challenging and, at times, risky.

Since we returned from Key West, we’ve traveled exactly—nowhere! True, we made a short car trip to a nearby ski resort here in Southern Utah. And we have driven all (and I do mean all) around Cedar City. But we’ve purposely limited our trips into Cedar City itself.

Cedar City is a beautiful, small town. It boasts a 30K population, but almost a third are attributable to the students who attend Southern Utah University when it is in session. The university sent all the students home in March when the pandemic shifted most of education from chalk and talk to online. Without the students, Cedar City is a smaller small town. Yet, Cedar City is either a very brave town or a risk acceptant town. Maybe being a university town predisposes risk acceptant behavior. All of those students—who knows what can happen? Perhaps the town’s DNA is predisposed to roll with the punches.

Unlike me, Cedar City does not have a healthy respect for COVID-19. Wear a mask while shopping here, and you’ll be in the distinct minority. Hair stylists do not wear masks. Shoppers walk their baskets in the wrong direction in the grocery store aisles. Yet, wearing a mask is walking up the down staircase here.

To be fair, the HVAC repair people we had to our condo in Las Vegas were maniacal when it came to wearing their booties in my home but none of them wore a mask. They wore gloves but not a mask. And everywhere we did go in Las Vegas (grocery store, Costco, curbside food pickup) few shoppers wore masks.

Utah’s COVID-19 infection rate is way up as is the positivity rate. Only recently has Cedar City gained a COVID-19 testing station, and no one is yet offering accessible antigen testing. Most of the infection appears to be in the northern part of the state. Cedar City (Iron County) has only reported 17 confirmed cases, and no new cases since April 20^th. During the same time period, elsewhere in Utah, there have been over 11,700 new cases. Yesterday, the rest of Utah reported 624 new cases. There is no curve flattening in Utah, except Cedar City.

SUU’s fall semester begins after Labor Day when all ten thousand of its students will once again have their heads in dormitory and rental housing beds. They’ll all be back. They’ll return from Utah, bordering states, and beyond. I don’t wager, but if I did, I’d bet that 17 confirmed cases will look downright cute by the first of October.

The anecdotal data suggest young people don’t wear masks.

Cedar City is in Utah and a small town. Not a lot of bars, although there is one near campus. Students can always be found in the Walmart, Lin’s grocery store near campus, and the older ones in the state liquor store Utah has done its best to hide. Without profiling any one group of people, let’s just say any retail establishment with sugar enhanced products does a land office business. No shortage of such places in Cedar City. Pizza places too! Beer is on sale in the grocery stores. Y’all come!

The anecdotal data suggest young people don’t wear masks. But then again, neither do their elders in Cedar City.

The historians—and history(!)—tell us that those ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat its failures. In the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, the second wave was worse than the first, because people were no longer willing to voluntarily wear masks and socially distance (stay at home). The political elites tired of compelling public health emergencies and mandating any type of behavior. Then too, economic prosperity triumphed over public health. There was also an issue that a free people saw wearing a mask as an act of subjugation and a loss of a precious freedom.

Frankly, I’m tired of searching for reasonably priced masks (that fit and elastic that doesn’t break!), hand sanitizer, and sanitizing wipes. I’m finding FaceTime and Zoom are not satisfactory substitutes for visiting family and friends (except in one or two circumstances I won’t describe). AND, I really miss traveling.

Our planned March trip to Hawaii: Rescheduled for September (as if). The forthcoming trip to hike the Welsh coastline at the end of the month is as good as dead. All that remains is fighting with the airline who is determined that our prepaid airfares should become unsecured loans for its survival. In fact, we’re about to be charged for three nights lodging in Liverpool, England, even though we can’t find an airline to fly us to the U.K., and if we could, we’d have to find someplace near the airport to quarantine for 14 days—well past the scheduled date for our stay in Liverpool. 

But my time in the pandemic hasn’t been without some excitement. A recent health scare occupied much of February and March. And even though I received a clean bill of health, Medicare informs me the whole experience—two office visits, one MRI, and one hospital outpatient biopsy—incurred a cost of $38K. I am informed had the worst come to pass, there would have been charges of an additional $150K. Reading the invoices is a tour of everything that’s wrong with our system of healthcare.

Who thought my “tours” would be of the health kind. Certainly not me. Give me a safe place to sit for an eleven hour flight, a big bottle of hand sanitizer, packs of sanitizing wipes, a supply of face masks with ear straps that don’t break, a cleanliness routine appropriate for hotel rooms and restrooms, curbside pickup for meals, and a socially distanced hiking trail by the Welsh coast, and hey, I’m there.

Copyright 2020, Howard D. Weiner