Collected Item: “The Sound of Silence: COVID Summer 2020”
Give your story a title.
COVID Summer 2020
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Photograph
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
On June 24, 2020, the city of Wichita, Kansas, announced that it would not open any of the city's municipal water parks, splash pads, or swimming pools for the duration of the summer. Pools like west Wichita's Harvest Park, depicted here, would normally be teeming with people on hot summer days, but COVID-19 defied public health officials' predictions of a summer subsiding, with case numbers surging across the South and Central Plains. Kansas suffered an influx of summer COVID infections due in part to a politically-driven, decentralized re-opening plan that devolved authority to county commissions and local officials, while relegating what had once been mandatory state executive orders to mere "suggestions." With Kansas and surrounding states grappling with widespread illnesses, the summer of 2020 was marked by empty pools and full hospitals.
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Aaron Peterka
Give this story a date.
2020-06-25