Holcomb Faces Pressure to Reopen Governor Will Announce Reopening Sequence on Friday As Deaths Mount by BRIAN A
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V25, N32 Thursday, April 30, 2020 Holcomb faces pressure to reopen Governor will announce reopening sequence on Friday as deaths mount By BRIAN A. HOWEY INDIANAPOLIS – As Gov. Eric Holcomb prepares for what he describes as “halftime” on the COVID-19 pandem- ic, he faces pressure to begin reopening the state’s economy while infectious cases and deaths continue to mount and elude the apex. He is expected to revise his shutdown order at 2:30 p.m. Friday. On Thursday, Holcomb will meet with Vice President Mike Pence in Kokomo, where he will likely be lob- bied to reopen swiftly. His presumptive day of clusters that have not been adequately addressed. Democratic opponent, former state health commissioner So, that worries me deeply.” Woody Myers, says the state still lacks the necessary Holcomb and his pandemic response team will be adequate testing capacity. “We are not even at the end in the process of putting what is being billed as a gradual of the beginning of novel coronavirus, of COVID-19 in reopening order – in the governor’s hoops parlance the Indiana,” Dr. Myers said Wednesday. “We haven’t seen a sustained decrease in the number of cases. We certainly Continued on page 3 know that there are pockets that are being found every Future shock arrives By BRIAN A. HOWEY TRAFALGAR — I moved to a new condo in the early stages of this pandemic, and as I restored my per- sonal library, I found a coverless paperback edition of Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock.” “What it has proven is that a In his introduction for the 1970 landmark book, Toffler explained, “I coined the term ‘future shock’ to drug can block this virus. This describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in will be the standard of care.” individuals by subjecting them to - Dr. Anthony Fauci, after Gilead too much change in too short of time.” Sciences report a major study With this coronavirus pan- run on the drug remdesivir had demic, we have essentially come to another pivot point in American shortened the time for COVID culture which has begun to unfold patients to recover by an average over the past six weeks, joining the American Revolution, the Civil of four days. Page 2 War, the 1929 stock market crash and column on Page 10. We read about the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor the Black and Bubonic plagues. Now and World War II, the assassination we get to experience one. A pandem- of President Kennedy, and 9/11 as ic inspires paranoia, loneliness, and events that inextricably changed our fears of a second Great Depression. lives. What we can’t quite fath- Howey Politics Indiana The dreary month of April om is how our culture is about to WWWHowey Media, LLC ends with more than a quarter million change. A few months back, entering c/o Business Office Hoosiers out of work, at least a thou- a convenience or liquor store with PO Box 6553 sand of us dead, while our favorite a mask on could get you shot by stores, restaurants and bars are on an alarmed clerk. Some of us fret- Kokomo, IN, 46904 the ropes. ted about a $1 trillion federal www.howeypolitics.com Toffler writes of budget deficit and the disap- the human experience pearance of Republican deficit Brian A. Howey, Publisher over the past 50,000 hawks. Within six weeks, that’s Mark Schoeff Jr., Washington years, with 62-year risen to $4 trillion and prompt- lifespans accounting ed Mitch McConnell to ponder Mary Lou Howey, Editor for 800 such lifetimes, shutting off the money spigot a Susan E. Joiner, Editor about 650 of which were year before a COVID vaccine is spent dwelling in caves. available. Subscriptions For most Hoosiers, the Derek Thompson writes 799th and 800th lives in The Atlantic that the wob- HPI, HPI Daily Wire $599 were outside the agrar- bling department stores and HPI Weekly, $350 ian experience. shopping malls will be put out Lisa Hounchell, Account Manager Toffler wrote of a “super in- of their miseries, and that only 30% (765) 452-3936 telephone dustrialist” age marked by the advent of restaurants will likely make it. (765) 452-3973 fax of the car and airplane a century ago. “We are entering a new evolutionary [email protected] The new game changers of our time, stage of retail, in which big com- Google and the iPhone, are about to panies will get bigger, many mom- Contact HPI enter their third decade. I’ve long writ- and-pop dreams will burst, chains [email protected] ten that Americans face an existential will proliferate and flatten the idio- Howey’s cell: 317.506.0883 crisis about every 80 years. COVID syncrasies of many neighborhoods, has arrived about 79 years after Pearl more economic activity will flow into Washington: 202.256.5822 Harbor. e-commerce, and restaurants will Business Office: 765.452.3936 In 1994, Toffler told New undergo a transformation unlike any- Scientist magazine, “We coined the thing the industry has experienced © 2020, Howey Politics phrase ‘future shock’ as an analogy since Prohibition,” Thompson writes. Indiana. All rights reserved. to the concept of culture shock. With “Some of these changes are violent future shock you stay in one place but interruptions to modern life, like the Photocopying, Internet forward- your own culture changes so rapidly closing of gyms and cessation of sit- ing, faxing or reproducing in any that it has the same disorienting effect down restaurant service. But in the form, whole or part, is a violation as going to another culture.” long term, COVID-19 probably won’t of federal law without permission In most of our lifetimes, the invent new behaviors and habits out from the publisher. ramifications of these cultural pivots of thin air as much as it will acceler- seemed to impact our lives around ate a number of preexisting trends.” the fringes. JFK’s death gave way to I excerpted Thompson’s Jack E. Howey the Beatles, Vietnam war protests, Atlantic article in Tuesday’s HPI Daily editor emeritus Watergate and the growing distrust Wire, just above a Muncie Star Press 1926-2019 of government. Sept. 11 brought the story about Jack’s Camera Shop notion of entering an airline without downtown closing its brick and mor- shampoo bottles in your luggage and tar shop. “It was a tough call, but if with your shoes and belts off, along we continued we wouldn’t have even with billions of dollars of security been able to make the online jump,” costs. said Mike Powell. The pandemic of 2020 is the More disturbing in that April arrival of what was once an academic 28 Daily Wire was the notion of food exercise, as Craig Dunn writes in his shortages. “The food supply chain is Page 3 breaking,” wrote board chairman John Tyson in a full-page from the White House, which stalled, then called on pri- advertisement published Sunday in The New York Times, vate enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. Washington Post and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette following “It turns out that everything has a cost, and the closure of packing plants in Logansport and in Water- years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and drain- loo, Iowa. “There will be limited supply of our products ing its morale inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our in lives,” Packer continues. “All the programs defunded, facilities that are currently closed.” stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot talked of the had become a second-rate nation. Then came the virus Cubs and White Sox returning to the friendly confines as and this strange defeat.” well as 35th and Shields, sans fans. Fox News reported Associated Press reporter Calvin Woodward put that 80% of survey respondents wouldn’t feel safe return- it this way on April 24: “When the coronavirus pandemic ing to work. A Politico/Morning Consult poll revealed 73% came from distant lands to the United States, it was met think Americans should continue social distancing, even with cascading failures and incompetencies by a system if it means continued damage to the U.S. economy, while that exists to prepare, protect, prevent and cut citizens a 79% believe that second wave is very or somewhat likely. check in a national crisis. The molecular menace posed by Toffler adds, “Future shock is a time phenomenon, the new coronavirus has shaken the conceit of ‘American a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in soci- exceptionalism’ like nothing big enough to see with your ety. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on own eyes.” an old one.” Through all this uncertainty, alarm, disease and While President death, there are rays of hope. Trump kicked off his rule Hoosier first responders are hold- with what was roundly ing parades for health care workers described as a “dystopian” in The Region. Sewing clubs have element (or, as George W. sprung up to fill the need for PPE Bush said of the inaugural the federal stockpile was unable to address, “That was some deliver. weird shit”), George Packer Driving north of SR135 in in The Atlantic describes Trafalgar last Saturday was to find a America as a “failed state,” line of about 50 cars waiting to pick writing: “Every morning in up a drive-thru meal from the Crow- the endless month of March, bar Inn and Lounge. These were Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed Hoosiers ready and willing to support their local watering state.