Covid-19 pandemic, new waste streams

latex glove near city street in Grand Rapids, April 13, 2020

Five months after the Wuhan outbreak of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and four weeks after the State of Michigan lockdown of all private enterprise, except food and medicine and car fueling, there are a few signs of the pandemic here in west Michigan's biggest city. Confirmed cases of Covid-19 now in Michigan top 24,000, but many more are contagious and showing few or no symptoms. That same number happens to be the nation-wide death count so far. Half of the known cases in Michigan are Detroit and surrounding counties. So far 1400 people in the state have died from c-19 complications.

Here are some signs of the pandemic. Schools are closed, along with all non-essential business operations. People sometimes park at stores by leaving an interval from the next nearest car. Maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of customers don masks of some kind (commercially produced or homemade or jerry-rigged scarfs, etc) to trap their own breath (inhaling others' water droplets is reduced, too; but one's own expelled droplets are trapped most of all). Recommendations for social distancing at 6 feet apart are expanded for runners and bikers, who create a slipstream of water droplets when they exhale. The above photo shows the wide-spread use of vinyl or latex disposable gloves to use when selecting purchases at retail store, or when grabbing the handle to fill one's gas tank. With so many people unemployed or working from home, few cars fill the streets and highways; wildlife has been observed venturing out more widely than before, too. Those who walk their dogs or exercise do seem to follow the social distancing guidance, having to leave the sidewalk to create distance from oncoming people. Families, friends, book clubs, churches and their small groups, as well as businesses have been using some of the video meeting services to communicate by way of home Internet connections or using cellphone data services. Zoom Meetings have been particularly used a lot for their "one click" ease of use: 40 minute session free, or one person can pay the monthly $15 to obtain "host" credentials (up to 100 simultaneous users and 24 hours of uninterrupted connection per session). Food stores and perhaps other retail operations have installed plexiglass barriers to separate the breath of cashier from customer. Curbside pick-up of recycling and yard trimmings (official yard-waste bags) has been suspended, too.

Imagining the steps leading to more and more restrictions eventually going the other way, loosening up as Covid cases decline, it is hard to know precisely how all these precautions will carefully be dismantled. One radio commentator summarizes the "3 T's" as (1) testing, (2) tracing any flare-ups, (3) treatment that is effective and proven. Only when that infrastructure is in place can the free movement of people and their exhaled water droplets resume; not just in the orbit of the local economy, but also to go longer distances and between countries, too. The whole thing in the aggregate will be uneven, since hotspots differ from the areas most lightly affected. That is true within a particular nation-state, but also globally, with some societies better organized and supplied and informed than others. So long as the virus has a reservoir to reproduce, the risk of pandemic will always be on the horizon. The disruption to the status quo of transporting capital, ideas, people, raw resources and value-added products could lead to new ways of regionalizing or evaluating the things capable of conveying viruses. Recession or sustained recession that results in shrinking the economic pie (depression) may be another multi-faceted legacy of these months now.