Thursday August 13 2020
Dayton Daily News announced a pop-up drive-thru COVID-19 testing site to open in the Dayton area next week. While nobody seemed to have a problem with three hyphens in one sentence, others were quick to respond to the online announcement with their opinions.
The first comments were in the line of “don’t do it” and “why bother,” followed by the obligatory “they’re implanting microchips” and the apex of conspiracy theories of “the tests are tainted with coronavirus by the CDC to make sure there are inflated numbers of positive results.”
Why do I even read these comments? I tell myself I want to understand different viewpoints, but I’m not sure I’m being truthful. I can’t put myself in their place to embrace their thoughts, these are too far out there.
One comment was “can’t wait for November 4th for this to be over.”
That again. Always that.
I was listening to Governor DeWine’s update on NPR on my commute from the office. He’s all facts and figures, which is hard for me to fully understand without seeing the numbers. What I heard was we’re seeing a decline in cases in Ohio overall, while still still concerned about some community hotspots in a few counties. Keep up the good fight, is the message. We’ll get through this with continued social distancing and by wearing face masks.
In the meantime, restaurants are closing, not able to reach their tight profit margins in this constricted economic structure, taking with them employment opportunities and commerce with suppliers. We’ve lost a few small business clients at the tax office where I work, same story.
Are we still fighting the good fight? Really? This is not sustainable, what we’re doing now. If we lose our small business community, that leaves the global deep-pocket megacompanies to control what we can buy and how much we pay and who we work for.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. We need small businesses in our communities.
Donnatopia 