Recently, authorities in several jurisdictions extended the stay-at-home orders implemented to control the coronavirus pandemic. New Jersey and Pennsylvania extended to May 7 and 8, respectively, New York State to May 15, and Wisconsin to May 26. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that his city wouldn’t open until July at the earliest. Leaders in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and the state of Washington have also indicated that the lockdown could continue into summer.
It will be hard enough to convince people to adhere to these policies for weeks or even months longer than they initially expected. It will be even harder to make them do so amid summer weather.
Last year, the United States experienced a series of devastating heat waves, beginning at Memorial Day and lasting through the end of the summer. The South, Northeast, Midwest, and West all broiled.
Heat kills, but the death toll was mercifully low. A massive heat wave last July caused only six fatalities. This was a drastic change from years past, when heat waves would kill dozens of people. The most notorious example from recent times is the 1995 Chicago heat wave, in which over 700 souls perished.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot took several actions last summer to ensure her city wouldn’t experience another such calamity, including expanding hours at dedicated cooling centers and designating facilities like libraries as cooling centers as well. Her strategy was successful, and Chicago was spared a repeat of the 1995 trauma.
Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that Lightfoot and other big-city mayors could deploy such remedies this year — not without serious modifications, anyway. The imperatives of combatting the heat are diametrically opposed to the imperatives of combatting COVID-19. The primary rationale of social distancing, keeping people from congregating to stop the spread of the coronavirus, precludes the most routine means of staying cool, such as hitting the pool — which New Yorkers won’t be doing, by the way, as de Blasio closed the city’s pools for the summer last week.
Beating the heat is something the middle class and those higher up the socioeconomic ladder can readily do at home. They may not have pools, but they surely have air conditioning. Nearly all people in the U.S. do. But the victims of the 1995 Chicago heat wave came from the segments of the population least likely to have it — elderly minorities living in older housing stock.
There are indications that the pandemic disproportionately affects our most vulnerable communities. The unavailability of the usual means to protect them from summer heat would compound its impact. Governments need to begin preparing now to prevent them from suffering even more because of this.
High temperatures aren’t the only climatological phenomenon whose onset summer portends. Summer means hurricane and tornado seasons. Public shelters are essential to protecting those in the path of either of these meteorological menaces — they’re also great places for spreading coronavirus.
Several organizations, including the National Weather Service, have advised people to seek refuge in public shelters if that is their safest option, regardless of the coronavirus threat. These contradictory directives are likely to present their own challenges as we navigate their conflicting messages and decide which danger is greater and, therefore, which decree to follow.
The outbreaks of severe weather the previous two weekends were the nation’s first during the pandemic. They won’t be the last. Scientists have predicted a more active hurricane season than usual. But even a normal season, coupled with the coronavirus, would be a “nightmare scenario,” as one North Carolina mayor put it.
Governments have to strike a delicate balance in enforcing social distancing regulations. Some have become overzealous, fining worshippers for attending church services in their cars or ordering them to self-quarantine if they do; banning some stores from selling gardening supplies; dismantling basketball hoops; arresting riders of public transportation for not wearing masks and fathers for playing T-ball with their daughters in empty parks; fining motorists for going on leisure drives; and banning fishing.
People have, for the most part, willingly, even amiably, complied with these mandates that have overturned their lives. Many were already socially distancing before they were told to do so. Yet such gratuitous, even draconian enforcement is likely to try their patience. This will be especially true the longer they have to stay inside and the nicer the weather gets. My own county had to reopen its parks because of popular demand, and summer is still months away.
Humans get antsy and restive the more they’re cooped up. Blue skies, green grass, and gentle breezes will entice them to emerge from their homes. It, therefore, behooves the authorities to work with summer instead of against it — especially since summer’s advent means the arrival of weather, which, in multiple ways, will be much less cooperative with their policies.
Varad Mehta is an elections analyst with Decision Desk HQ and a columnist for the website Arc Digital. You can find him on Twitter @varadmehta.
