The 2020 class of Goochland High School will graduate on June 16 at the Goochland Drive In Theater. Another creative solution for strange times from our school division.
Make sure you fill out your 2020 Census
questionnaire. This is important!
Specifics will not be released for 72 years. The results ensure that localities
get their fair share of government funds and provide updated demographic
information to plan for future infrastructure. Also, it will help your
descendants find out where you lived in 2020.
The ladies of St. Gertrude’s High School will be
joining Benedictine College Preparatory High School at its Goochland campus on
the south side of River Road just east of Rt. 288 this fall.
Holed up in the bunker at world headquarters, with
very clean hands and a mask at the ready, GOMM peers at the world through the
eyes of the internet caught in the endless loop of sameness. Many of us crave relaxation
of the stay-at-home order and hope that our favorite businesses have survived.
Do-it-yourself haircuts are not a universal
solution. Men with short hair can order clippers online to keep their heads
tidy. The rest of us either let our hair grow or attempt do-it-yourself trims
with very mixed, and unfortunate results. Hairdressers should charge extra for
remedial cuts. We should be glad to pay.
What will opening up look like? Some will rush to
places forbidden or closed during lockdown. Others may experience a curious
combination of cabin fever and agoraphobia. We want to go out but choose our
destinations carefully, avoid crowds, and keep our distance. Some of us will wear masks well into the
future and carry hand sanitizer in our pockets, others will not.
A pundit on a
TV business channel suggested that when a 75-year-old couple goes to a crowded
Chinese restaurant to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and
no one gets sick, this will be over.
The Virginia Department of Health seems to be releasing
more data, but the new and improved numbers add little clarity to the situation.
The number of tests reported includes people who were tested more than once. If
you test negative on Tuesday, there is no guarantee that you won’t test
positive on Thursday.
New VDH statistics indicate that more than half of
Covid 19 deaths can be attributed to long term care or other congregate living
environments. Cases are grouped by county or city. Promises to list cases by
zip code have yet to be kept. On May 4, for instance, the Virginia Department of
Health reported that Goochland has 80 positive cases, 5 deaths, and 11
hospitalizations. Still no indication if any of those cases or deaths are
associated with Department of Corrections facilities in the county. No mention
of the number of recoveries.
In the more than two months since Covid 19 cases
were identified, many of those stricken surely have recovered by now. Seems
like there is little follow up on people who tested positive but were not sick
enough to be hospitalized. If some agency is following this, they’re not
sharing their findings
Contact tracing—looking for the source of positive
cases to prevent further spread of Covid 19—may soon start. This seems like locking
the barn door after the horse is long gone. Why wasn’t this begun when case
clusters first appeared at long term care facilities in early March? Maybe that
could have prevented spread of the virus between facilities not to mention
protected the families of employees who may have unwittingly passed the
pestilence along.
Goochland schools
reacted to this unprecedented crisis in a masterful way. See Dr. Raley’s latest
communication about the wonderful work of “Team Goochland” at http://goochlandschools.org/…/04/celebrating-team-goochland/
The GCPS nutrition team that barely missed a beat transitioning from business
as usual to feeding kids in the strange world of Covid 19 gets special thanks
and deserves special blessing. Preparing and distributing food daily at several
locations around the county demonstrates both a commitment to the community and
a labor of love.
The class of 2020
lost the end of senior year—the culmination of 13 years of education— and many good
memories to the virus. May the pandemic be but a bump on their road to
successful and satisfying lives. They will have interesting stories to tell
their grandchildren.
Many lessons will be learned from this pandemic. In
a perfect world they would be used to mitigate the impact of future plagues. We
do not live in a perfect world.
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