Well, Now What?
Iowa is again open for business…mostly. Our restaurants will be at a fraction of capacity, our bars, museums and casinos are still closed, and we’re still supposed to wear masks or stay at least six feet away from anyone…but as dawn broke today, there was also the optimism of a new day for Iowans and business.
Except that some won’t ever come back; some folks took the opportunity to pull the plug on a marginal business, while others who had been considering it anyway simply retired. And the impact extends beyond businesses that closed; yesterday, two south central Iowa newspapers–in Pella and Knoxville–announced that their advertising revenue had dried up, so they were going out of business and merging with the Oskaloosa paper, leaving Marion County relying on Mahaska County for their news…and you can imagine how well that will go over.
And you can expect a spike in the number of cases; it’s bound to happen as people come out of their homes, squinting at the daylight after so long a time cooped up. The question is not if the number of cases will sharply increase, but by how much. And again, that’s fine; the goal of closing down our country, after all, was to flatten the curve, to limit the number of cases at one time to avoid taxing the health care system. But no one ever said that flattening the curve meant no one would get sick. It’s important to remember that.
As I said yesterday, now it’s up to us as citizens to make good choices. This next step in what seems like a slow series of moves won’t be flawless…try getting a haircut while wearing a mask, for example…and it will be a long time before life resembles the way it was just two short months ago; forget it ever being the same.
The whole principal of self-governance is having the information we need, and the maturity and good sense to use it. But somehow, just knowing that we have more options beyond take out food that gets cold by the time you get home is a helpful start.
