Items

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  2021-01-18

  Second Dose Issues

  In Wichita, Kansas, they gave all the doses they had with assurances that the second doses will arrive soon. However, as the date creeps up, the clinics haven’t received the second shipment later, and people are left wondering if they'll even be able to receive the second dose in the correct window of time.
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  2021-01-23

  Vaccine Rollout in Lower-Middle Income Countries

  Getting vaccines for lower to middle income countries is a challenge. Some experts believe up to 90% in low income countries will not receive the vaccine in 2021. It isn’t just buying the vaccine for them, it is transporting the vaccine safely. The vaccine is incredibly temperature-sensitive. The Moderna vaccine must be kept between -25°C and -15°C (-13°F and 5°F), while the Pfizer vaccine is minus 70°C! The answer for rural areas: solar-powered refrigeration. This “cold chain” of refrigerated vehicles may allow many areas in places like Africa to receive the vaccine. There are still complications and experts think up to 25% of the vaccines will still be wasted until the refrigerators are perfected.
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  2020-08-04

  A New and Uncertain School Year

  The marquee along Maple Street, Wichita, Kansas, for Benton Elementary School urges parents to enroll their children now in what many thought would be a challenging school year. In late July, the Wichita school board delayed the start of the school year until after Labor Day in order to give faculty and staff more time to adjust their curriculum to more flexible models, clean facilities, and set up necessary shields, barriers, and social distancing measures. Despite the mandate requiring these measures, as well as masks and hand washing every hour, teachers and students still ventured into an uncertain school year, as Wichita-area schools forged ahead with in-person instruction and contact sports.
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  2020-08-04

  Kansas Primary, August 4, 2020

  A scene taken on the day of the Kansas primaries for the US Senate and House of Representatives. With the state caught in COVID's grip, many voters availed themselves of mail-in-ballots, but some voters still preferred to show up to the polls in person, as they did here in southwest Wichita. Nevertheless, this image captures but a small segment of the various challenges that the United States faced in holding federal, state, and municipal elections in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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  2020-08-04

  A Roadside Appeal

  This sign implores Wichita residents to save a life by wearing a protective mask, thereby underscoring face masks' growing importance, when it had been previously dismissed as a relatively ineffective non-pharmaceutical intervention early in the pandemic. Not only does this sign attempt to reinforce the city's mask mandate, its wording also hints at how COVID-19 had become a threat to all age demographics by the summer of 2020. At the time of this photograph, the average age of an infected patient in Wichita had dropped from the mid-60s in the spring to 37, thus Wesley Hospital's appeal for everyone to do their part to help stop a rapidly accelerating and demographically expanding contagion.
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  2020-08-04

  COVID Testing West Wichita

  In an effort to expand testing in west Wichita, Kansas, West Wichita Family Physicians sealed off their minor care clinic from the rest of their facility in order to dedicate it to COVID-19 screening and testing. A patient would call the number listed at the bottom of the sign, then proceed to answer questions pertaining to their travel history, risk factors, symptoms, and possible exposure to the virus. Should the patient's condition warrant further investigation, an appointment was made, with the patient being guided by signs such as this to the proper testing site. At the time of this photograph's creation, Kansas's total number of cases stood at nearly 30,000, with over 4,500 in Sedgwick County alone. Typically, Kansans had to wait 9 to 14 days before receiving their results due to backlogs created by high turnouts and too few testing locations.
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  2020-06-15

  Connections Newsletter: How a Special Needs Community Weathers the COVID-19 Storm

  Given the unique challenges presented by COVID-19, special needs programs, such as Starkey, Inc. in Wichita, Kansas, needed to make equally unique adaptations so as to safeguard an already vulnerable community. This Connections newsletter from the summer of 2020 highlights some of those adaptations from early in the pandemic. These included local food donations to the various residences, the closure of day programs, homemade mask-making drives to make up for the mask shortage, and even visits from wildlife experts from a local zoo, who brought with them a sloth, a lynx, and a penguin for the residents to enjoy. Overall, this source provides a more in-depth look into how a community like Starkey dealt with the virus's early outbreak in ways that had to be uniquely suited to the needs of those they served.
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  2020-07-27

  Wichita School Enrollment Proceeds Under COVID's Long Shadow

  Upon rejecting the governor's order to delay the start of Kansas schools until after Labor Day, 2020, the decision as to if and when to reopen fell upon the state's individual school districts. Although Wichita school district USD 259 ultimately decided to delay the start of the academic year until after the holiday, enrollment proceeded under a cloud of uncertainty and unanswered question for students, parents, and teachers alike. This photograph points to that reality by advising all affected parties as to where the latest information can be found regarding an extremely delicate and fluid situation that left students, families, and teachers across the country wondering how something so routine as the new school year could be navigated safely in the face of a potentially deadly virus.
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  2020-07-27

  Masked and Contactless Service

  Following Wichita's municipal ordinance overriding the Sedgwick County Commission's decision to forego the governor's mask mandate, citizens were required to wear protective face coverings in all public spaces within the city limits. Electronic billboards and marquees, such as this one from west Wichita's Credit Union of America, announced that all customers must comply with this order should they wish to conduct business within their environs, while at the same time offering contactless methods for various bank transactions. These photographs underscore the urgency of both masks and social distancing, two of the most effective anti-COVID countermeasures, in combating a rapidly accelerating outbreak that city and Kansas state officials struggled to corral during the summer of 2020.
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  2020-07-21

  Different Restaurants. Different Policies

  These photographs present two different policy approaches taken by two different west Wichita restaurants. The "patchwork" of policies that came to define the United States' COVID-19 response also manifested itself in individual businesses, with some area restaurants, like Ziggy's Pizza, proclaiming that they're open for both indoor and outdoor service, while several blocks away, Chick-Fil-A's sign declares that their dining room remained closed. Both taken on the same day, these pictures represent the myriad messages and signals given by governments and businesses that added to the confusion and uncertainty that characterized the COVID-19 pandemic in Wichita.
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  2020-07-21

  A Packed Gym Parking Lot

  This photo shows a nearly full Northwest YMCA parking lot in west Wichita, Kansas. Despite rising case numbers, Sedgwick County still permitted bars, restaurants, night clubs, and gyms to continue operating, and at the time of this photograph's creation, local news networks were reporting that a public health order aimed at re-closing at least some of these establishments was imminent. Establishments such as gyms and night clubs proved to be fertile ground for viral transmission due to the difficulty in maintaining sufficient social distancing, thus the reason public health officials in Sedgwick County cited them as one of the key drivers of Wichita's virus surge in the summer of 2020.
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  2020-07-21

  Lobby's Open...If You Have a Mask

  After the mayor's and City Council's mask mandate went into effect, Wichitans were required to wear masks in all public indoor spaces, like this west Wichita bank. These photos reflect how this particular business adapted to the new mandate, requiring its customers to don a protective mask or face covering upon entering the building, or use the drive thru service should they lack one. Virtually unseen prior to the pandemic, masks became an integral mitigation tool during the pandemic that caused both minor and major changes to the look and conduct of everyday life.
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  2020-07-21

  Local Businesses Still Need Support

  The slogan "Stay Strong, Wichita" proved quite common during the city's lockdown in March and April, but became less so following Kansas's quick reopening. By July of 2020, Wichita, Sedgwick County, and the state itself grappled with rapidly rising COVID case numbers, prompting many public health officials to emphasize more emphatically their case to slow and roll back Kansas's reopening. Amidst rising illness, divided state and local government, economic pain and uncertainty, and trepidation at reopening Kansas schools in the coming weeks, this local west Wichita car wash exhorts citizens to support local businesses and to "Stay Strong, ICT." Note: "ICT" are the call letters for Wichita's Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (and its predecessor, Mid-Continent) and is a common term of endearment used by Wichitans in reference to their city.
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  2020-07-10

  See You Later Rather Than Sooner: Wichita Theaters Still Closed

  Capturing the same Warren Theater documented in the items "May the Force Be With You, Wichita" and "The Show's Over...For Now," these two photos clearly reveal that, despite Kansas's hurried attempts to restore normal economic activity, the show was still over four months after Regal closed the Warren Theater in west Wichita, Kansas. The sign expresses that the Warren misses its patrons like "popcorn misses butter," while the second photo captures a still empty parking lot on a hot Friday afternoon in July. The duration of the theater's closure is made even more evident by the weeds bordering the parking stalls in the foreground, some of which stood several feet tall.
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  2020-07-09

  Wichita's Healthcare Heroes

  This banner honors the work performed by the doctors, nurses, and staff of the west Wichita Wesley Medical Center Emergency Room at 13th and Tyler Road. Signs like these proved fairly common across the city, therefore adding to the wide variety of expressions of gratitude displayed across the world for those in the medical professions who have dealt with COVID-19's harsh reality. Nonetheless, at the time this photograph was taken, Sedgwick County announced that its hospital space and ICU availability was beginning to encounter greater stress. After a hasty re-opening and a lack of political will to enforce and maintain mitigation measures, COVID-19 cases surged across the state, with patients from the county and surrounding rural areas lacking direct access to medical facilities being brought to Wichita-area hospitals for treatment.
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  2020-07-10

  YMCA and Waterpark Reopen...And COVID-19 Kicks Into High Gear

  YMCAs reopened with restrictions beginning on May 18, although in-person group classes did not reconvene. This photo shows a fair number of vehicles at this YMCA facility in west Wichita, Kansas, and while the city's late June order closed municipal pools and water parks, this did not apply to aquatic centers managed by private entities. Nevertheless, patrons appear to be spaced out on the water slide, with a lifeguard at the top managing the queue. These photos reveal how people in Wichita were attempting to confront the pandemic while retaining some semblance of normalcy in their daily lives, but on the same day these pictures were taken, the Kansas Department of Health and the Environment announced 1,000 new cases in the state, bringing its total to 18,611, with 2,074 of those in Sedgwick County. A week before, the state's total was 15,919.
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  2020-07-07

  Citizens Protest at Wichita Mayor's Residence

  This news article from KSN, a Kansas news network, highlights the aggravation of political tensions that have only gotten worse with COVID-19's disruption of US society. In a move reminiscent of protestor tactics in St. Louis, Missouri, a group of Wichitans, disgusted with the mayor's successful push to implement city-wide mask use, staged a protest outside his residence, with its organizer even advocating, should participants choose, to exercise "Second Amendment rights" as a sign of protest. Although not a large demonstration, this article nevertheless adds to the emerging portrait of a country and its communities cleaved by politics and a pandemic.
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  2020-07-07

  Wichita City Council Ordinance No. 51-307: Facemasks Required In Wichita, Kansas

  This Wichita ordinance, passed on July 3, 2020, overrode the Sedgwick County Commission's vote declining to implement Kansas Governor Laura Kelly's executive order making masks mandatory statewide; a vote that was held the previous day. Due to an accelerating positive test rate in both Sedgwick County and Wichita, the Wichita mayor convened a special session of the City Council to mandate in the city what has become one of the most effective preventative weapons against COVID-19. This order specifies the necessity for masks in public, when citizens must wear them, and penalties for non-compliance. Moreover, this order stands as an artifact of the divisive politicization that has come to dominate much of the United States's coronavirus response, especially in states like Kansas, where a Democrat executive, like Governor Kelly or Mayor Whipple, has repeatedly clashed with a Republican-dominated legislature or county commission.
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  2020-07-06

  Wichita Must Mask Up

  After the Sedgwick County Commission voted 3-2 to not implement the governor's order requiring Kansans to wear masks in public places where social distancing was not possible, Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple convened an emergency session of the City Council to debate and vote on a city-wide ordnance that would override the county's authority . By a vote of 4-3, Mayor Whipple's ordnance passed and became effective immediately, thus prompting local businesses to post signs like this one on their establishments. This sign reflects the first time during the pandemic that mask-wearing became an enforced mandate in Wichita, as the city struggled to control a virus that seemed to be at controllable levels just a few weeks before this photo was taken.
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  05/02/2020

  "This Too Shall Pass"

  This sign from a local Wichita counseling firm reflects the enormous psychological burden that the pandemic has placed upon people's mental health, with lockdowns, job loss, financial uncertainty, and fear of the future fueling depression and anxiety among many in both the USA and the world. #NortheasternJOTPY
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  05/02/2020

  Save Lives. Stay Inside.

  This particular message in east Wichita, created by Lamar Trailers, calls upon citizens to save lives by complying with the state's "shelter-at-home" order. #NortheasternJOTPY
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  05/02/2020

  "For Those At the Front"

  An electronic billboard in east Wichita praises healthcare professionals for their continued efforts in battling the COVID-19 pandemic. The language used in this sign is reminiscent of the gratitude extended to GIs in the post-9/11 era, especially during the Iraq War, thus reflecting the pandemic's growing impact that will cement it as one of the country's, and the world's, watershed moments. #NortheasternJOTPY
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  04/05/2020

  Show's Over...For Now

  As a result of the statewide lockdown measures, all theaters, including the Warren and its always-popular IMAX, closed in an effort to halt the pandemic's march across the city. #NortheasternJOTPY
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  04/03/2020

  A Church's Prescription for COVID-19

  This local church offers just a single word for how to combat the growing virus threat. Aaron Peterka, Northeastern University
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  04/05/2020

  Stay Healthy, Wichita

  A shopping center marquee wishing passersby good health as COVID-19 makes its way to Wichita. Aaron Peterka, Northeastern University
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  04/03/2020

  Stay Home

  While temporarily closed during the Kansas Lockdown, this local car wash sign advised passing motorists to re-think their travel plans if they were feeling sick. #NortheasternJOTPY
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  2020-04-03

  Arts-and-Crafts-to-Go

  Customers who had placed online orders could use the new "curbside pick-up" service in a rather unique shopping experience for arts and crafts that reduced in-person contact, and by extension, the virus's transmission. #NortheasternJOTPY *Northeastern University
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  2020-04-03

  New Market Square, West Wichita, Kansas

  Despite most stores and shops being shuttered in the popular New Market Square, both Best Buy and Michael's Arts and Crafts maintained a curb-side pick up service for customers who had placed online orders. #NortheasternJOTPY *Northeastern University
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  2020-04-03

  Workouts Called on Account of Virus

  This image of west Wichita's sprawling Northwest YMCA captures the vacant parking lot and the abandoned rock climbing wall that would normally be crawling with visitors. However, the well-publicized closures did not deter some patrons from attempting to gain entry before being sorely disappointed by the signs posted on the doors; a site witnessed just moments after this photograph was taken. #NortheasternJOTPY *Northeastern University
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  2020-04-03

  Quiet Lunch Hour, Part II

  West Wichita's Hurricane Sports Bar and Grill, facing west. All neighboring businesses in this small shopping center alongside 13th Street shut down, including the ICT Bike Shop and the Great Clips Hair Salon, since the state had deemed them non-essential businesses. #NortheasternJOTPY *Northeastern University
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  2020-04-03

  Quiet Lunch Hour

  The Hurricane Sports Bar and Grill on 13th Street in Wichita, Kansas, sits empty during what would normally be a busy lunch hour. The banner on the far right indicates the restaurant's open carry-out and delivery services. #NortheasternJOTPY *Northeastern University
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  05/02/2020

  Facebook Services

  With in-person church services suspended beginning in March, churches like this one in east Wichita, Kansas, switched to Facebook to carry on in the face of COVID's spread.
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  2020-05-02

  Rock Your Mask, Wichita.

  One of a series of COVID-19-related messages from the same electronic billboard on Central Avenue in east Wichita, Kansas. This particular announcement encourages Wichitans to "rock their mask" by personalizing their PPE while doing their part to slow the virus's spread, as the young girl featured in the message does with her customized Wichita State Shockers mask. Image taken on 05/02/2020.
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  2020-05-01

  Playground Closed

  Sign posted in front of one of several playgrounds at the popular Sedgwick County Park in west Wichita, Kansas. All playground equipment had been roped off during the state's "stay-at-home" order. Sedgwick County, Kansas: creator Photo taken by Aaron Peterka, Northeastern University Image taken on 05/01/2020.
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  2020-05-02

  Social Distance on Kansas Highways

  This highway sign on K-96, just north of Wichita, reminds motorists of the importance of social distancing.
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  2020-04-03

  Car Wash Sign Advocating Hand Washing

  Having been temporarily closed due to the outbreak, this Wichita car wash sign instructs passersby on proper hand washing procedures. Image taken on April 3, 2020.
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  2020-04-05

  A Great Sacrifice

  This west Wichita, Kansas, church marquee sign reflects the state-mandated social distancing restrictions that went into effect on March 30, 2020; restrictions that prohibited large social gatherings, shuttered K-12 schools for the remainder of the spring, required 6-feet of space between individuals in public, and closed all non-essential businesses, such as retail stores and gyms. Photo taken on April 5, 2020.
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  2020-04-03

  New Market Square, Wichita, Kansas

  Looking across the usually busy New Market Square during the first week of Kansas's "shelter-in-place" order issued on March 30, 2020, which closed all non-essential businesses in the state. *Aaron Peterka, Northeastern University
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  2020-04-03

  Stay Strong, Wichita

  An electronic billboard at a shopping center along Maize Road in west Wichita, Kansas, encouraging citizens to weather the crisis and look forward to better days. The sign incorporates the city's emblem with a blue heart added in its center. *Aaron Peterka, Northeastern University