The Next Wave

It will hit rural America hard

So far, in this part of Arkansas, most people have been spared the worst health effects of Covid-19. Van Buren County, where I live, has fewer than 17,000 people, and has only had 28 confirmed positive cases so far. Two of those remain active, two people died, and 24 have recovered. There are more than 3,000 cases in the state—a third of them have been in one prison, and those cases weren’t even added to official totals at first, all of which is a human rights disaster—but most families haven’t been affected. Any death is a tragedy, but this one hasn’t personally touched very many people here. At least not yet.

Rural America has not been affected evenly. There have been hot spots in the Navajo Nation, and around meatpacking plants. I had hoped one factor that might spare us the worst of it is our natural social distancing—we live farther apart from each other, we have fewer places to gather, we don’t have public transportation, and we already have many people who avoid going “to town” unless it’s absolutely necessary. But we also have fewer resources to deal with illness if and when it does come. Many rural counties have an older, less healthy population already. Most of the people who care about rural America have been bracing for a perfect storm. It is not too late for it to arrive.

This is a populace that is used to having more than its fair share of untimely deaths, and being on the wrong side of other negative trends. Perhaps that’s why people in my town feel they’ve been spared in this wave. While we had a national hot spot next door to us, in Cleburne County, local officials there took quick action. Because it arrived later to Arkansas than it did to other states, I think Governor Asa Hutchinson’s moves to shut down schools and restaurants in mid-March came early enough to help prevent widespread illness. I had been critical in the past because he did not issue a stay-at-home order, but looking at protests in places like California and Michigan make me now wonder if his wasn’t the wiser course. Shutting down places where many people could gather while avoiding orders to stay home may have accomplished the same goals without inspiring a backlash.

Epidemiologists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has become a kind of national doctor and conscience, warned early on that success in flattening the curve would make it look like we overreacted. That is now what many people believe, and they are eager to return to normal. School is closed for the rest of the year, but the state is going to begin opening up, under certain conditions, May 11. This rush will undoubtedly lead to a spike in new cases, and I fear the next wave will finally make the dangers apparent.

Many are especially eager for their workplaces to open up, because the economic toll has been much more devastating for most Arkansans. I don’t have exact numbers yet on how many Arkansas jobs have been affected, but many Arkansans have joined the 30 million or so newly jobless since the pandemic began. There have been other issues, too: businesses operating with a diminished staff or schedule have cut the hours available to the employees they still have.

The median income in the state is $45,869; for the county it’s $34,428, and so there are many people who live paycheck-to-paycheck. For the most part, the people I’ve spoken to and seen commenting online accept as a given that the only way to be able to pay their rent or to feed their kids is to return to work: they don’t think it’s possible to protect our health and our economic wellbeing at the same time.

People were happy with the $1,200 economic impact payments, but it wasn’t enough to replace incomes. And yet, many people were eager, as the Senate debated, to include a $500 billion pot of money for the biggest corporations in the country. They thought sending a lifeline to gigantic, publicly traded corporations would be the key to holding onto their jobs. I asked someone if she thought that was the only way to ensure her wellbeing. “Yes ma’m,” she said, before bowing out because the discussion became too political. “It’s the trickle effect.”

There were more arguments over whether unemployment insurance should be enhanced by $600 a week. Many of my friends here were upset that people could make more by not working, and indeed, that has happened for some. A friend of mine, Amy Johnson, who grew up here but lives in Little Rock, applied for unemployment insurance when the restaurant she works at closed down. She had trouble at first, like many others did, and became trapped in a website problem she had trouble resolving because there were too few people answering the phones and too many people calling. “But when I got ahold of a person on the phone after about 1 month they were helpful and friendly,” Johnson told me. “It worked well ever since. I got the money I was supposed to and the stipend.” She had savings to cover the month she was out of work and wasn’t receiving UI, and says she makes a little more right now, $2,720, compared with about $2,300 during her busiest months bartending.

Her restaurant is scheduled to reopen May 11, with many others in the state. But she is more worried about the near future. She is finishing work on a master’s degree in social work, and doesn’t know if the jobs she has applied for will continue to be there. More than that, she thinks shifting national priorities and federal and state funding will change the shape of social work in the years ahead. “I have been thinking that it will be an extreme one way or the other,” she told me. “I expect money to be dumped into certain areas of nonprofit work and not so much in others. I am thinking a great increase in public health from the federal and state level.” Other areas, especially small nonprofits that struggle to compete for new grants, may suffer.

In the meantime, Arkansas hasn’t moved to help workers in any other ways. I asked, during a public conference call, one of our state representatives whether there had been any discussion of lawmakers about rent moratoriums, or similar actions. He said he hadn’t been part of any of those conversations. “A lot of our workforce is able to continue to work,” said Joshua Miller, a state representative whose district includes parts of Cleburne and Van Buren counties. “And so they’re being paid like normal. You don’t want folks taking advantage of a crisis situation.”

Fear of someone “taking advantage” is the fundamental operating mode of charity here, in my experience, although it is obviously not a fear held by everyone here. During the holidays, I saw many people on Facebook posting generous offers to buy meals for “truly deserving” families in need, whole boxes of turkeys and vegetables and cranberry sauce. The people who did so spent at least an extra $30 at the grocery store to provide a holiday meal for someone else. But it was on a small scale: one individual giving to one family they could personally screen. Meanwhile, the community, as a whole, votes against food stamps, disability, and other social safety net programs, and often lament that people are “taking advantage” of them. It’s a weird idea: the entire point of charity, and of social safety nets, is that people are meant to take advantage of them. I wanted to respond to these posts and say, “What if I told you that you could spend $30 a year to feed families year-round?” There have been similar personal efforts now: the food bank connected to a Church of Christ church south of town is busier than usual, and other churches are passing out boxes of food at lunch time. The school is sending the lunches they’d otherwise be serving in the cafeteria out to families via school buses (enabled by a relaxing of USDA rules that are perhaps always unnecessary and were largely enacted by Republicans, lest someone take advantage of school lunch by bringing food home.) Early on, before the state issued guidelines to the contrary, the teachers and bus drivers were hopping out to hug the kids and their families, taking pictures, and posting them on Facebook. There’s a sense that anything labeled “government” is cold and distant, while handing a family a box of food feels warm and good. Of course, it feels warm and good for the person who is handing the box over; I don’t know how it feels for the person on the receiving end, who might prefer the freedom and flexibility to purchase their own food, and who might rather not have their pictures posted on the school’s social media account.

Thoughts on Last Week…

This post is later than I meant it to be. I try to post Sunday afternoons. But last week really hit me hard, for reasons I can’t identify or explain. It was the first time I really felt that I was living through a pandemic. Before now I had been alternating between panic and an adrenaline-fueled frenzy. I kept vacilating between “It’s the apocalypse!” and “Everything will actually be fine!” The reality is that it will be neither, going forward. That realization drained the last energy and resolve out of me, and now I feel heavy and tired. An archaic meaning of the word “sad” is “heavy,” and I always think it’s very appropriate, the way that sadness can settle on your shoulders, forcing you to carry it around for a time, so that you’re trying to go about your normal life with added resistance. It’s a drag.

What I’m Watching:

It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken of my love for Outlander. Someone introduced me to the show at a friend’s dinner party by describing it as a kind of feminist Quantum Leap, and I said, “That sounds like a show I need to watch!” We binged the first season, which we’d already missed, on Starz, and then I read all the books and all the novellas by Diana Gabaldon. It is often very silly and of uneven quality and definitely NSFW, but, I think, in some ways, it is also a deep story about the way that history is shaped by small, interpersonal relationships as much as, or even more than, by big events with important people history remembers. One of its main characters, Young Ian, touched on that theme in Sunday’s episode. The Season 5 finale is this Sunday.

Also, my partner Samir and I have been watching The Alienist, on TNT. How did I not know this show existed? I also wouldn’t have guessed that I would like it, but, here I am, looking forward to it almost every night after dinner. The acting is fantastic, and Luke Evans stole my heart long ago in the live action Beauty and the Beast. I never read the book, but I’m told the adaptation is so faithful that I don’t know if I will.

I’m also jazzed about the new season of The Last Kingdom on Netflix, but haven’t gotten around to starting it yet. It’s one of our favorite shows. I like both it and Outlander much better than Game of Thrones, the last few seasons of which I’m still angry about.

Cool Old Things:

The above photo is from one of my favorite buildings in town, an old service station. It’s been really well preserved, unlike most of the downtown, which is in a flood plain. If it were in a big city it would be a condo and cost $5 million. Someone posted to our local Facebook page this old clipping about its opening, in 1937. A wash and grease job (I don’t know what that means) cost a dollar.

Cute Animal Pic of the Week:

I am starting a new nonprofit to help people get their pets spayed and neutered, and while I won’t tell you a lot about it or hit you up for money for it, I will be blasting out links and info soon, so pay attention if you want to help. Rain L. Wolf, the white puppy below, was our first customer.