It’s been a long, strange forty-four days. Jefferson County has baked. I can tell, because there is no flour to be had. Jefferson County has gardened. I can tell by all the planting I’ve seen my neighbors doing. Jefferson County has, by and large, stayed healthy. I can tell by this case summary put out by the county.
I suppose I should be relieved and feel safer for that. Instead, I mostly feel sad. Denver County, about 30 miles away, has had 202 deaths. It has had 3,892 laboratory-confirmed cases, out of a population of 619,968. That’s 0.62%. Jefferson County has had 1,160 confirmed cases out of a population of 582,881. That’s 0.19% To me, those numbers illustrate the class divide in this country. Part of the disparity is about population density, yes. And there are plenty of privileged people in the city and county of Denver. Nevertheless, these numbers speak loudly of class.
Our 44 days of staying home have clearly worked for those of us with the privilege of doing it, which is most of the foothill communities. Even for those of us who make up the socioeconomic diversity of the area are massively privileged now. The houses up here, be they humble or not so much, are far apart. Nobody shares an elevator. Most people are able to work from home, and there is a good chance they were already doing it. We complain about the crowds at our parks like it’s the local pastime, but they are paltry in comparison to the parks in the city.
In my area, I give the stay-at-home order four and a half out of five stars for keeping the privileged safe. I give it two out of five stars for keeping the underprivileged safe.
We talk about the two Americas now to reference our political and cultural alienation. But when John Edwards (yeah, I had to look that up) brought the phrase into the popular lexicon, he was referring to the class divide. That divide seems especially stark now. It is a little hyperbolic to say that it is life or death. Instead, it’s more of the same dynamic that already existed: life or increased risk of death.
And that’s without getting into the racial disparities that lie starkly exposed in the wake of the first wave of COVID19:
And so we should be a little sad as we mark this milestone of moving from stay-at-home to safer-at-home. Those of us who have been lucky and able to stay safe shouldn’t be celebrating our relative success with stay-at-home, we should be mourning, not just for the dead, not just for the bereaved, not just for the ill, but also for equality and opportunity.
Signing off. Take Care, and Take Care of one another.
P.S.: I will be using this milestone to revise my posting schedule — a little less frequent because I want to do some more in depth pieces. Thanks.
*** Change *** I initially included the case number for the unincorporated mountain communities in Jefferson County as 14. This was wildly incorrect — I didn’t realize the chart had broken out several of the unincorporated mountain communities separately. The case count in Evergreen, my town, currently stands at 47. Thanks to Cliff Coffey over on Facebook for pointing that out.
*** Update *** The Evergreen Chamber of Commerce estimates that there are 25,000 people in Evergreen. That makes our 47 cases 0.19% of the population, the exact same rate as the county as a whole.
