On March 11, the day the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a global pandemic, Iowa seemed to think it was unassailable. News stories had filtered into the state. We had our first confirmed case on March 8, but the virus itself felt distant. We had a shitshow of a caucus only a month before, and Super Tuesday was still a recent memory. The thing about living in the middle of the country is that so many things pass over you: Trendy apps don’t make it out until years later; Broadway shows skip us on tour; bands only come to town when they are still scrambling for relevance. Once the political candidates clear out, we go back to being confused with Idaho and Ohio. After all, we had only 54 cases of West Nile, so maybe we’d be okay.
At that moment, the virus felt like an abstraction, even though it was already here. By mid-March, Linn County, where I live, would become the county with the most confirmed cases of the virus in Iowa. Then it was quickly outpaced by Polk and Black Hawk counties because of outbreaks at senior care centers and food processing plants. The state’s most vulnerable, numbers on a chart. Growing until now…
