A TRUE STORY OF OPENING UP FOR BUSINESS AFTER COVID-19

…A picture of the shopping square in Avalon, Georgia

On Avalon Boulevard, people were gathering at restaurants for their first dinners out, and every table inside and outside was crowded.

As we know, there are some states that are opening up for business, even though they have not fulfilled the requirements coming from the CDC.

As the death toll continues to soar across America, a development of restaurants and shops in a wealthy corner of suburban Atlanta, Georgia called Avalon decided that it was time for life to resume.  Georgia’s governor had also decided that it was time to open up the state.

In this wealthy Georgia corner, a masked worker swept a store’s threshold, while a masked clerk brushed off windows that had been gathering dust.  A masked gardener fluffed pink roses in the planters along the sidewalks, where the signs on doors said what so many had been waiting to hear.

“OPEN”, “Welcome Back!”, and even “Yea!”. 

This was just another great experiment that was under way in a place that was promising, “the luxury of the modern South with none of the current virus death”.

Versions of this pledge are now being made all over the country, as stay-at-home-orders are being lifted.  Businesses are opening, and millions of Americans now find themselves free to make millions of individual decisions about how to offer their sense of civic duty with their pent-up desires for the old routines.

In this giant gamble, Georgia has gone first, with Gov. Brian Kemp (R) dismissing all the public health experts who’ve warned that opening too soon could cause a catastrophic surge of deaths. This governor is placing his bet on the citizens of Georgia to make up their own minds about what risks and sacrifices they are willing to accept.

“God bless,” he’d said as he gave the order to reopen hair salons, nail salons, massage parlors, tattoo shops, restaurants and retailers across the state.  That order would be supported in the days ahead with data on an official Georgia website claiming that confirmed cases in the state’s hardest-hit counties were in steady decline since before the reopening.

That claim would turn out to be mistaken and the governor would have to issue an apology.  But such details were not on any minds in Avalon that day, where a middle-aged man made his way into a Starbucks, deciding to stand mask-free before a 60-year-old barista who was nervous on her first day of, “back at work”.  The customer said, “Venti dark with cream and 12 sugars?” he stated cheerfully, then headed outside into a glorious spring day.

(“My goodness, really, 12 sugars?”)

In the past at Avalon, it was a place that had epitomized the rewards of upward mobility going back to 2014.  This date is chiseled into the stone pillar at the entrance.  Avalon has a long boulevard with a green central plaza. It has fountains and it has wide sidewalks and trees strung with lights.  It has fresh impatiens and sculpted shrubs and music floating out of hidden speakers, and a dream-scape of suburban aspiration..

But now there were signs saying “Better Together & Being 6’ Apart”

“The future is bright,” read the words on one window.

But then one said: “Do not enter if you have a fever or other symptoms of Covid-19,” as a woman and her husband breezed past it into Anthropologie.  “You’re open?” she said to the clerk.  “Welcome in,” the clerk said through a mask as the other woman, who was not in a mask, and as she skipped the hand sanitizer at the front, and wandered through the racks.  But after a few minutes, she walked outside.  “I just want to feel normal,” she said.

“It’s a personal choice” said her husband, also mask-free and in shorts and a polo. “If you want to stay home, stay home. If you want to go out, you can go out. I’m not in the older population. If I was to get it now, I’ve got a 90% chance of being cured.  Also, I don’t know anybody who’s got it.”  (So you think!)

They strolled hand in hand down the sidewalk as “I Love Vegas” played through the speakers.  They were totally untroubled by the reality that Fulton County where Avalon is located, had more than 3,600 coronavirus cases and 151 deaths……so far.  And these numbers were growing as people began sitting down for a glass of wine at the Wine Stop. 

So far, most of the coronavirus cases were in the part of the county closer to Atlanta.  You know, the poorer and more heavily African American part, which was not the typical demographic of Avalon.  Shoppers here tend to be wealthy and white. 

At an Avalon shoe store, Ms. Debbie McGuiness, a clerk, stared out the window at the people whose pandemic concepts seemed so different from her own.

“I live an hour away and was driving in this morning, only me on the road, and I was thinking, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ ” she said through her mask. “And you see some out there jogging, no mask on. I think their confidence is rising.”

A few doors down, Ms. Tamara Mitchum had started her shift with a prayer: “Lord, I know you’re bigger than corona” that was written on her mask.  She was now turning to one of her first customers, a woman holding up a green bathing suit.  “Will this fit me?” the woman said.  “For your height, this one would be perfect,” Mitchum said.

Meanwhile, outside Crate & Barrel, Ms. June Sheets, a retiree, was loading her trunk with a box of new acrylic dishes and an outdoor planter for a luncheon she was hosting.  “This is glorious — I think the news is blowing it all out of proportion. The wineries are opening this weekend for indoor service and we’re going there tomorrow. I can’t wait!”  Outside Urban Outfitters, Ms. Jennifer Kiernan was having a glass of wine as her daughter shopped inside.  “Oh my God, this feels great — I love it,” she said, explaining that she assumed that she and everyone around her was healthy. “I think people would not be out if they had been exposed to anyone with corona.”  (How would they know?)

Inside Parisian Nail Salon:  “Who specializes in ingrown? Because I have an ingrown,” Ms. Greta Holland, who was in her 60s, said.  She then extended her hand through a hole in an acrylic partition, just so she could get a manicure from a woman on the other side, wearing a mask of course.  

Ms. Holland, who was not wearing a mask, turned to chat with her friend in the next chair, who less than 6 ft away and was reclining for her pedicure.  “If this is risking my life, then I’ve been risking my life going to Costco,” said Ms. Betty Luke. “I went to the antique mall yesterday on Highway 9 and it was just like — it was like freedom. We have to get out. We have to live in this world, and if we don’t —”  “It’s not living,” said Holland, who checked her nail color — “Oh I love it!” — paid $32 and began to put on a surgical mask, but then she decided not to.  “I hate these things,” she said, heading back outside into the sun, where the music had switched to “Party in the U.S.A.” and the sidewalks were getting more crowded with people walking three and four across along Avalon Boulevard.  

Many were no longer paying attention to the green one-way arrows, nor the dashes of fluorescent tape marking six-foot increments,  nor the clerk at the front of Urban Outfitters offering Purell hand sanitizer.  “Hand sanitizer?” she said to the people walking by.  “Again, Hand sanitizer?”

Ms. Shannon Lloyd then headed for a rack of fleece tops.  “Oh, this is cute — is this pajamas?” she said, holding a pair up.  “I love that,” said Amber Medley, Lloyd’s nanny, who had gotten the coronavirus back in March.  She nearly went to the hospital, but was now enjoying her retail outing mask-free, because she was assuming that she was no longer contagious and also immune to the virus.  “This is good for our mental health,” Medley said.  It’s a distraction from what is going on in the real world,” said Lloyd.

A few doors down, Ms. Beth Painchaud was pushing her 88-year old mother in a wheelchair around carousels of floral blouses.  “How are you feeling, Mom?” said Painchaud, 60, placing a bare hand on her shoulder.  “Feels good to be out browsing,” said her mother, Joan Painchaud.  

They had already had cocktails and appetizers at Kona Grill, and now they were drifting around, not buying anything, “just escaping,” said Beth, who wheeled her mother out of the store and onto a sidewalk that was only getting busier, filling with mask-free walkers, mask-free shoppers and mask-free children running around a fountain.

In the warm afternoon, a group of teenage girls were coming together for taking selfies in front of Brooks Brothers.  Neighbors were meeting each other for cocktails and yes that were hugging.  “Yeah, I’m going to do the laser and the filler,” a woman was saying to her friend as they shared a bottle of wine on the patio of Cru.  “I’m getting my nails done tomorrow, screw it,” said a nurse drinking a glass of wine on a bench after work.

On the sprawling green Avalon plaza, people began gathering elbow-to-elbow on blankets and lawn chairs, opening beers and bottles of wine.  “I think you have to live life,” said Jeff Lampel, taking a sip of beer.

“When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics, I’m not worried,” agreed his friend Scott Friedel.  “I know what people are going to say: 'Those selfish idiots are killing our old people!’ ” said Lampel.  “How do you give up a day like this…really, how?” Friedel said, enjoying the last rays of sun as the music kept playing and the crowds kept coming.

Along Avalon Boulevard, people were clustering at restaurants for their first dinners out, and at one of them, every table inside and outside was crowded full, and people with done hair and done nails gathered hip to hip at the entrance to put in their names.  They waited around the bar and they spilled out onto the sidewalk as sweating, masked waiters tried to weave around them with cocktails and trays of food.  

Out on the patio, two couples were talking about how they had decided it was okay to come out for dinner, okay not to wear masks, okay to share a plate of hummus, okay not to worry about spreading or catching the coronavirus, not here in Avalon.

“If people had symptoms, they wouldn’t be out,” said Jeff Weisberg, sipping a cocktail.  “If I was compromised, I wouldn’t be out,” said his wife.  “We are not topping the charts with deaths like they said we would,” said their friend, who began talking about how she felt President Trump had been “brainwashed by a bunch of liars” who had exaggerated the coronavirus threat.  When her husband said that he thought that all the restrictions were actually based on a “false narrative,” they all nodded in agreement. 

They then dug into the hummus and when Weisberg finished the last of his cocktail, he suggested his friend should try one too.  “Will I like it?” his friend said.  “Yeah, it’s got a little jalapeño in it,” Weisberg said, raising his voice over the louder and louder din of people enjoying themselves on a lovely evening in the pandemic America.

“Isn’t this great?” he said. He flagged down one of the waiters who hurried over.  “I’ll take another spice mist,” he shouted.

Back in South Korea, an infected individual, that didn’t know that he was infected, went “Night Clubbing” in Seoul, Korea and that night, he visited 3 local night clubs.  He later became aware that he had the virus.  Due to the South Korea’s tracking capability, those 3 Night Club visits had infected at least 17 individuals in those 3 night clubs.  (There may have actually been more than the 17 they had found.)

It will be interesting to see what happens if those locals that visited Avalon, Georgia that day, also have a spike in those getting the Covid-19 virus.

Copyright G. Ater 2020