BY LAWRENCE SOBCZAK
PUBLISHER
With all of the closures and changes in everyday life, I am writing to say The Record will always be here for you.
I am sure that I am not alone in feeling shock, fear and anxiety of the news of the past two weeks.
The spectrum runs from complete denial to absolutely terrified.
All of these feelings and emotions are completely natural and healthy. It’s part of being human.
For me, the scary news brings back memories from when I was just four years old and the day I learned about tornadoes.
On April 3 and 4, 1974, 148 tornadoes descended from the Midwest sky, killing 315, injuring 5,484 and causing $4.58 billion in damage in 2019 dollars. It is known in meteorology as the “1974 Super Outbreak.”
Somehow, I saw a video on a news broadcast of Xenia, Ohio which was completely leveled to the ground.
As the average four year-old, I found thunderstorms frightening—they were now terrifying!
I never knew Mother Nature could be so destructive. It seemed so random and so unexplainable. It was something out of my control.
Until that moment, I did not know a spinning cloud could descend from the sky and destroy the whole world as I knew it.
Over the years, I discovered that the more I learned about something that frightened me, the less terrifying it became to me.
Here’s what I have learned about the coronavirus so far.
No, you’re probably not going to die, and preventing your death is not the reason the government has declared a state and national emergency.
The emergency was declared to protect chronically ill/medically vulnerable people; OR that elderly relative or friend; OR that rare unlucky healthy person the coronavirus REALLY likes; OR that medical professional that treats all of these people.
We have a medical system without any excess capacity to handle the people that will become critically ill from the disease.
The emergency declaration is designed to drastically slow the spread. It’s a proven scientific fact that it works. The hospitals can treat a lot of people, just not all at once.
The Washington Post created an excellent simulation and explanation that really helped put my mind at ease.
It is posted online at https://wapo.st/corona-simulator?tid=ss_mail
The other thing I learned is that we’re not going to run out of food or toilet paper.
For example, The New York Times reported that there are 900 million pounds of chicken in deep freeze with billions more pounds of chicken somewhere in the production process from chicks on the farm to trucks on the way to your local supermarket.
All of the farmers, truckers and grocery store workers are still on the job bringing the food to you.
It is wise to buy extra items while at the grocery store so you don’t have to make another trip soon. It is greedy to buy more chicken drumsticks than you could possibly eat in two years.
I have been in touch with numerous government officials over the past week and they are all maintaining vital services you depend on.
There are plans on how to limit police and firefighter employees’ exposure to the coronavirus. Plans are being made on how to deal with shifting the workload if an employee becomes ill.
Water, sewer and trash pick-up service continues.
The postal service plans on continuing to deliver and is exercising precautions put in place in after an anthrax scare back in 2001.
Speaking of mail, here’s an interesting question about this newspaper: how many people touch The Record before you read it? The answer is probably just one—your mail carrier.
Technology has progressed to the point nowadays that we load the newspaper pages into the computer and onto the press without touching a thing during printing.
The newspaper is printed, labeled and bundled then placed into mail bins and bags without anyone touching a single copy.
We also load our mailing list into a computer program that presorts all of the addresses by mail carrier in the exact order the carrier does the route.
The only thing the mail carrier has to do is open the newspaper bundle and start placing newspapers into mailboxes.
If you buy the newspaper at the store or vending box, our newsstand carrier is likely the only person to have touched it, if at all. She grabs a whole stack or bundle of papers and fills it up.
Finally, we have tried not to hype up this emergency since it started but this week it got real serious.
Our focus has been on local information you cannot find anywhere else.
We take our job seriously and make it our duty to keep you informed while we all work hard to stay safe.
You can count on The Record every single week. We’re all in this together.
