Southern Winds

This may surprise some readers but I am not overly critical of the glut of U.S. states, mostly in the South, that have decided to reopen and let their citizens get haircuts and go to the beach. You all know that I believe that mass reopening is unwise without adequate testing, which we do not have, and that belief hasn't changed. Neither, however, has my belief that we are sometimes one nation and sometimes fifty states, a belief that predates this crisis, and informs my thinking that states like South Carolina and Oklahoma, which do not have New York's disadvantages when it comes to a pandemic, should not have to suffer for it. 

There are risks to reopening, of course. Without testing, a second wave of the virus will return. States and counties that are open will travel or infect commuters from states and counties that are not, effectively opening more places than intended. The federal government's guidelines wisely suggest that a state should see a declining number of COVID-19 cases before it reopens, a hurdle which none of the restriction-easing states clears, but social distancing has worked, we have learned healthier habits and most states (including all of the ones reopening) have not overwhelmed their hospital systems. Any reopening is going to be a trial and error (albeit with the error resulting in deaths) and we now have Georgia and Florida shaped balloons up in the air. 

Further, it is May 1, International Workers Day, and it is time to experiment with how we get the most people back to work. In the spirit of internationalism, there are lessons from around the world as to how to respond. Many countries which have effectively dealt with the first wave of the virus are taking steps that look similar to what the South is doing. Australia and New Zealand are reopening beaches (though many surfers never stopped going) and South Korea is allowing its citizens to travel amongst the country—all three are emphasizing social distancing and increased sanitation throughout. Taiwan never shut all schools or restaurants and those continue to operate. Of course, every country has different circumstances—Turkmenistan is just straight-up pretending like the disease doesn't exist, which it can afford to do (for now) because of its population but may learn to regret it—but the American South is much closer to central European nations in terms of infrastructure and new cases than central Asian ones. Speaking of central Europe, Germany, which has handled the crisis as well as anyone to this point, is slowly reopening, protecting worker's income with a ramped up unemployment benefits that resemble some of the changes many states have undergone.

The German word for this stop-gap is kurzarbeitergeld which means "money for short-time work." I love the economy of the German language, how it combines many parts into one word that means something very specific. Why say "Twilight of the Gods" when you can just say "Götterdammerung" instead? This is a language that has a word, schattenparker, for someone who parks his car in the shade, another word, zischeln, which means to whisper angrily, and a word, handschuhschneeballwerfer, which means someone who wears gloves to throw snowballs, which they use to label someone as a coward. There must be something in German psyche that equates surviving cold with manliness. Warmduscher, another insult, means one who only takes hot showers. My favorite German word is kummerspeck, a word that describes the weight caused by eating too much when feeling sorry for yourself. It literally means "grief bacon." True, Polish people like my ancestors usually only interact with the German language when it's being shouted at them from a tank but it really is a lovely tongue. 

Back to this country, I also can't help but pick up on a little low-hanging South-bashing in the criticism of the states that have reopened. There is a timbre to the critiques that follows a "Of course those people are reopening, they can't wait to get outside and shoot their guns" laziness that suggests that Southern states are mindlessly reopening or are doing so to own the libs when each state has taken wise, measured precautions. The reopenings are more aggressive than most but are still within the calculus that all states and nations must navigate to balance the health of their citizens with their economies. Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, has required shops admit no more than five people per 1,000 square feet. Texas has opened many state parks but only for daytime use as long as you have a reservation and a mask, restrictions that are more severe than the ones we have in Iowa. Speaking of parks, I know it's fun to dunk on Florida (I am a savant at it) but for all the tsk-tsking the state has received for opening beaches, consider that New York City, the epicenter of COVID-19 in the whole world, has not closed its parks and has, in fact, kept many of the public restrooms in those parks open, which Florida—freaking Florida—has been too cautious to do. 

It is natural that New York has been hit hardest, seeing as it contains the country's most populous city. I say the most populous but New York City is not the largest. America's largest city, indeed the world's largest, has a metro population of less than a million. In 1907, Hawaiian state law established that the City and County of Honolulu are one and the same, meaning that the city includes the rest of the island of Oahu and many more Hawaiian islands, which stretches over 1,500 miles, giving it an area of excess of a million square miles. It is the only city in the world where 75% of it is covered in seawater (Justin Glisan, climate scientist, would like me to add "for now" to that statement).

Perhaps it is my Southern protectionism that gets my hackles up. I am not a Southerner but I love the region and believe it gets scapegoated out of proportion to its sins (which, admittedly, are myriad). These states are taking a risk—Southerners are more likely to have underlying health complications that make COVID-19 more deadly and the region has the fewest ICU beds in the country—but it is a risk that the rest of the country will benefit from by seeing how it goes. More than 44% of America's military recruits come from the South, despite having only 36% of the relevant population so Southerners are not afraid of jumping into the breach. I'm not sure they deserve our praise for what could be a reckless gamble but I'm quite sure they don't deserve derision, either.