My Two Cents
Who doesn’t love a parade? Tonight, we’ve all got a chance to join — or at least watch — one that has a history stretching back years.
Every year around this time I’ve typically written about the Snyder Wheels Car Show and Cruise. My youngest daughter, Gillian, and I went every year, checking out the cars and other vehicles. Once the show moved to the park, and expanded, we enjoyed the simulators and other additions. Neither of us are really car enthusiasts, but we enjoyed seeing the time and energy folks who are put into their vehicles.
One year, we even got to ride in an old Studebaker in the cruise.
Second only to the annual Lighted Christmas Parade each year, the cruise draws huge crowds along College Ave. as the cars headed to the downtown square.
This year’s car show went online - like so many of the rest of our day-to-day activities. As businesses are slowly and cautiously re-opening, tonight’s cruise is going to be a welcome, and at times loud, signal that things really are returning to normal.
I’m looking forward to that.
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With just 13 people showing up to be tested at the state’s mobile COVID-19 testing site earlier this week, Scurry County most likely won’t experience a sudden spike in positive results in the coming days. Even though just more than 1 percent of the population here has been tested, the low number of positive test results has been encouraging.
As people continue to be tested at the hospital, and businesses begin to re-open, there’s a chance we’ll have additional cases diagnosed here.
It’s important to keep the daily updates, and any changes in the curve, in perspective.
If, for example, we learn about additional positive tests next week, we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it was because we had the mobile test site, because some businesses re-opened or because of any of a dozen other reasons. It could be due to all or none of those.
Hopefully our community’s leaders will continue provide us with enough information to add context to the daily updates.
There are still more questions than answers about COVID-19, and unfortunately there’s no crystal ball to see how exactly how this will all play out.
So, instead of worrying about the future, let’s keep doing what’s been working. As we’re slowly re-opening our hometown, we can each continue to practice social distancing, protect others by wearing a face mask when we’re around large groups and by taking the incredibly simple step of washing our hands.
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Tomorrow is World Press Freedom Day, and perhaps more than during any other year, is timely.
Had a free press been allowed to operate in China, how much more quickly would the public –— there and around the globe — have known the truth about COVID-19’s spread? How much misinformation has the Chinese government spread across its state-run media outlets and social media in an effort to cover itself?
Answer to both: A lot.
According to a UNESCO report titled, Journalism, Press Freedom and COVID-19: As the novel coronavirus has reached nearly every country on earth, there has also been mass circulation of falsehoods that have spread as fast as the virus itself.
These lies have helped pave the path for the infection, and they have sewn mayhem in how societies are responding to the pandemic. Journalism is key to supplying credible information within the wider ‘infodemic,’ and to combating the myths and rumors. Without it, false content can run rampant. Falsehoods in circulation can be categorized as both disinformation (produced and shared with malicious motivation), and misinformation, when these lies are spread without bad intentions. But in the context of COVID-19, the effects of both can be equally deadly.
Bill Crist is the publisher of The Snyder News. Comments may be emailed to publisher@snyderdailynews.com.