Preparing Your Community for COVID-19

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One week after last year’s Nebraska Planning Conference bomb cyclones and floods hit the Midwest, wreaking havoc on community after community. A week after this year’s conference the nation has been reeling from the onslaught of COVID-19, Coronavirus. What’s going on here?

Social media has since been filled with a multitude with tweets, memes, and various posts making light of the situation.

Admittedly, I have been spending my evenings chuckling at memes about toilet paper, it’s verbal linkage to a Mexican-based beer, and whatever else social media dreams up. However, the subject is no laughing matter. People are dying. Period.

Most notably in the news the sporting world has been hit as every major sport has suspended activities. Even the NCAA College World Series has been canceled, those games are slated for June, three months away! But concerts, conventions, and other events with large gatherings throughout the United States have been postponed or canceled entirely.

Additionally, in the past two weeks I have received countless emails from a number of entities discussing how they are going to address the threat. Although some of the generalities are the same, there are often a few particulars that vary from entity to entity.

So who do you trust as a source for information on how to handle the crisis for your community? The CDC that’s who. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a web page with a wealth of information for Schools, Workplaces and Community Locations. More specifically, they have a link on the page to Actions for Protecting Communities from COVID-19. This PDF contains ten pages of information for communities.

Hopefully this virus fades into history like many of the other recent viruses our nation has been through in the past few decades. Stay safe!