Columns
The Coronavirus in Kansas: A Week of Triage
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This has been a week of triage for our city. With the Sedgwick County Commission at first resisting and then finally
submitting to medical opinion (and political pressure) regarding the need to
order many businesses and places of public gathering to close for the sake of
minimizing the potential spread of the coronavirus on Monday, the other
shoe–which every small business-owner and all of their thousands of supporters
throughout the city have known was just waiting to be dropped–came down
on Tuesday, and the scramble find a new normal began in earnest. We’d seen
libraries, movie theaters, restaurants and shops of various kinds, and so much
else start to limit their hours or close down entirely last week; this week it
finally became official. The question becomes the classic one which arises in
every emergency, every instance of limited resources: what can be sustained,
what can be changed, and what can’t be saved? Like many Wichitans, toward the end of last week I made the time to check in
on places of business I was most worried about surviving the loss of commerce
which this order–and, let’s be honest, the even stricter ones likely to follow
it–is going to entail.
