‘We have responded with love and care.’ The small town at the epicenter of coronavirus in KY.
The last time Cynthiana Mayor James D. Smith had a full blown community crisis on his hands, this was the banner headline from WKYT:
“Cynthiana Mayor wants people to stop losing their minds over trick or treat times”
That was bad, Smith admits, but not exactly the best preparation to become Kentucky’s early epicenter of Covid-19 cases. Five patients have been diagnosed with the virus from Harrison County, according to state officials, and all of them were in contact with each other. The state’s other three cases so far are in Lexington and Louisville.
“We like to be first in a lot of things, but this is not something we were looking for,” he joked.
In small towns, gossip can transmit faster than viruses, and political fiefdoms between judge executives and mayors can hamper, well, almost anything. But that’s not happening in Cynthiana (pop. 6,300) Smith said. Well, maybe just a little gossip.
Still, Smith said, “I’m super proud of our community. Obviously there’s a lot of fear and anxiety, but most people who are healthy and young are still going about their life as usual.”
Smith said he is worried about local businesses and restaurants because volume is way down. He had breakfast at the Burley Market coffee shop on Tuesday to show folks there’s nothing to be scared of. But for the most part, he said, “we have responded with love and care for each other.”
That includes Harrison County school employees, who decided, even though all the schools are closed this week, to make free lunches for all the students in the district. If you can’t get to Northside Elementary or the high school, they’ll deliver.
That includes a local fast food restaurant, that has offered to deliver meals to the “dozens of people” that Smith said are in self-quarantine at home.
That includes Crystal Miller, the head of the regional health department, who’s becoming a familiar face at Gov. Beshear’s daily press briefings, as she calmly explains what’s going on.
That includes the weekly Cynthiana Democrat, which with two reporters, one of whom is the editor, published a special section with all the information at hand on the virus and send it out to every household in Harrison County.
The idea belonged to editor Becky Barnes. She’s been at the paper for 44 years, and can’t remember a bigger story except for the 1997 flood of the Licking River that put much of the county under water. On Saturday, she hitched a ride to Frankfort for Gov. Andy Beshear’s briefing with Smith and Judge Executive Alex Barnett.
“On the way home, we were talking about all the information we had, and I said we need to put out a special section, we can have it out by Sunday afternoon,” Barnes said. “My idea was we just print it and put it in strategic places, and the judge said, ‘We need this to go into every home.’ It just snowballed from there.”
So much so that by Sunday, all the pressmen had come in to prepare for a press run of 18,000, well above the usual 5,000 a week.
The paper is helping people with education, Barnes said, which is the only way to avoid panic.
“I think part of that too, is because our leaders are staying calm,” she said. “I think it projects calmness within the community. Their mantra right now is don’t panic.”
Most worried are folks like Karey Riddell, a local small business owner. They opened the Burley Market in downtown almost a year ago, selling gourmet coffee, breakfast and lunch.
On Tuesday, she saw a pretty empty cafe, with most people getting orders to go.
“This impacts local businesses in a very big way,” Riddell said. “We are feeling it, and according to our truck drivers, it’s impacting a lot of people in Harrison County and beyond in the industry. People are just not eating out as much.”
Of course, the industry is wiping and cleaning and disinfecting at every turn, from extra mopping to wiping down credit card machines after every customer. “Honestly, the restaurants in Cynthiana are cleaner than they’ve ever been.”
From getting out in public to reading comments on social media, Riddell hears a split in people’s reaction from total panic to total calm. “I’m not hearing much in between,” she said.
Smith hopes that the needle swings all the way to calm as the briefings continue, and hopefully, the number of cases stays low.
“We didn’t expect to be the first community in the state to be dealing with this, but we’re prepared because we work so well together,” he said. “We’ve built the relationships to allow us to handle this, maybe that’s why God chose us to be first.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 1:43 PM.
