Patience and a cordial approach will carry us through these fretful COVID-19 times. Science will fix this. Faith in a higher power is handy. But also, faith in people is important.
Bill Graham
People are tense. So, provide kindness, drive safe, smile as you create social distance, give a thank you to people who sell us food and medicines. This will go a long way to making these days better.
The coronavirus is still limited in Platte County compared to hard-hit areas of Missouri and the United States. But if you’re one of the people who have it, or have a family member who is sick with the virus, or someone with symptoms who has not been able to be tested, this illness is serious and sobering and numbers don’t matter.
Numbers do matter when it comes to money. These are grim and scary financial times for many people. In the limited driving that I’ve done for essential errands in Platte City, the closed shops and strangely open roads are eerie. No way to sugar coat it. COVID-19 uncertainties are not fun.
We are lucky in Platte County. We are not dependent on mass transit for errands or getting to jobs, default social distancing. I hope there is mass transit in the future. But for the moment mobility independence is a good thing.
A good county parks and trail system is an extra-good thing now. People under stay-home orders can still get outside, stretch their legs, jog, ride a bike. They do not have to travel far to find open spaces. Many Platte County residents can walk to them. Let us hope high-quality development of county and city park systems continue.
We enjoy rural farms close to the city. There’s opportunity for farmer’s market operations. I hope the health guidelines work out so that by summer they can be open, even if precautions are in place that make them less easy. It is nice to have food options.
I have always enjoyed visiting and joking with cashiers and employees staffing grocery stores, gas stations and quick shops. If you don’t get along well with people, you don’t last long in those jobs. But beyond friendly, now we are starting to view them as heroic. Jobs that once seemed so simple now bear serious risks.
We live in a time when science brings hope. Our Platte County ancestors had less blessings regarding science than we possess.
During the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, the exact cause of what killed people was suspected but still uncertain. It turned out to be a virus like COVID-19. A story in the Missouri Medicine Journal marking the epidemic’s centennial noted a 13.5 percent increase in mortality in northwest Missouri in 1918 compared to 1915. Spanish flu was the cause. Kansas City was particularly hard hit according to historical accounts. Platte County must have suffered, too.
In the 1800s, water-borne, bacterial-caused cholera infections started in India and spread as epidemics around the world. The oft-fatal ailment was noted in an 1850 entry by historian W. M. Paxton in his Annals of Platte County.
“The first visit of cholera to Platte City was this summer,” Paxton wrote. “A stranger got out of the stage and commenced screaming and cramping at the post office . . . Judge Norton, N.H. Hope and W.M. Paxton determined to take him to a vacant house . . . but the man fell down on Main Street with cramps and screamed so as to alarm the town. We gave him the best of care but in 36 hours he died . . . the breath had hardly ceased when a trembling gang, who had given him no help in his lifetime, carried him off in a box, by night, to an improvised grave. His name was never known. Fear settled on the whole county. The disease was fatal among emigrants on the plains. Several strangers and some citizens died at Weston.”
Today, we know the cause of COVID-19. We know some measures of prevention such as physical distancing. Science and the medical fields are working on care and cures.
A harder thing, perhaps, is loneliness. We miss being side-by-side with friends and co-workers. So as the late John Prine sang about lonely, “say hello in there,” by phone or note or hollering across the fence to family and friends.
Don’t forget the smile. I’ve encountered a few folks who pass by at a distance with a glare as if deflecting a virus with unfriendliness.
Be friendly, neighborly, and leave the extra packages of toilet paper on the store shelf so someone else can have some, too. This is not easy, but that’s the way we get through.