Death toll, questions increase in pandemic
Simon Romero, Manny Fernandez and Marc Santora
It is a staggering toll, about 200,000 people dead from the coronavirus in the United States, and nearly five times that many — close to 1 million people — around the world.
And the pandemic, which sent cases spiking skyward in many countries and then trending downward after lockdowns, has reached a precarious point. Will countries like the United States see the virus continue to slow in the months ahead? Or is a new surge on the way?
‘‘What will happen, nobody knows,’’ said Catherine Troisi, an infectiousdisease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. ‘‘This virus has surprised us on many fronts, and we may be surprised again.’’
In the U.S., fewer new coronavirus cases have been detected week by week since late July, following harrowing outbreaks first in the Northeast and then in the South and the West.
But in recent days, the nation’s daily count of new cases is climbing again, fueling worries of a resurgence of the virus as universities and schools reopen and as colder weather pushes people indoors ahead of what some epidemiologists fear could be a devastating winter.
The coronavirus death toll in the U.S. is now roughly equal to the population of Akron, Ohio, or nearly 2 1/2 times the number of U.S. service members who died in battle in the Vietnam and Korean wars combined. About 800 people are still dying daily.
Around the world, at least 73 countries are seeing surges in newly detected cases, and worries are fast mounting.
In India, more than 90,000 new cases are now being detected daily, adding 1 million cases since the start of this month and sending the country’s total cases soaring past 5 million.
In Europe, after lockdowns helped smother the crisis in the spring, the virus once again is burning its way across the continent as people proceed with their lives.
Israel, with nearly 1,200 deaths attributed to the virus, imposed a second lockdown last week, one of the few nations that has done so.
A lot of the town’s hustle and bustle was centered around its railroads and port.
The house in which I grew up was situated on a tree-lined street where kids played from morning until darkness fell or the yell of your mother in the distance meant it was time to run home for dinner.
The reminder of the town’s industrial roots was simply a block away, where the nearly constant roars and banging of trains coupling and uncoupling in the ol’ Nickel Plate Railroad yard provided a soundtrack for my youth.
I lived on the south side of the tracks and away from the lake, closer to Conneaut Creek. This was where many of the working-class families called home.
The north side of the track was home to some of the newer and more expensive houses closer to Lake Erie.
There were some exceptions there, like the cluster of older homes in the harbor section of town where many of the workers at the Pittsburgh & Conneaut Dock Co. lived and raised their families.
On this side of town, life was accompanied by a constant hum of machinery unloading iron ore from large ships onto rail cars that hauled the fuel of industry to hungry steel plants in Youngstown and Pittsburgh.
You didn’t need a watch if you lived in the harbor because an air raid siren would go off throughout the day to alert dock workers of shift changes.
But this town of my youth that always seemed to have a Democratic mayor and City Council is much quieter now.
Time marched on while I set off for college to pursue a career as a journalist and raise five kids of my own in Medina, Ohio.
I would return home occasionally — not often enough — to visit my parents, who, in my high school years, moved to the north side of the tracks into a ranch home closer to the lake.
The passing of each year after I left would bring news of another plant closing or the loss of another Main Street institution. Once, it was the soda fountain at Crombie’s Pharmacy, where I used to ride my bright orange bike to buy a cherry phosphate, then the Jcpenney store across the street, where I spent all my Christmas and birthday money to purchase my first Sony Walkman cassette player.
And with each visit, the town became a bit grayer, like me. Young families were becoming fewer as jobs and opportunities offered by many of these industrial plants and major employers like the railroad and dock trimmed payrolls or closed up shop altogether.
As these changes chipped at the edges of this bustling town of my youth, this once-formidable Democratic town started to show political cracks.
I remember once, when I was in high school in the midst of the Reagan era, I found a “Proud Republican” bumper sticker and put it on the back bumper of my dad’s work car as a prank.
This proud union man, who toiled his entire working life at a Firstenergy coal power plant in Ashtabula, blew a fuse when a fellow worker called him out on it.
He grumbled at dinner that night — while not accusing me directly of putting it there — and asked if any of us thought a Republican had helped put that night’s meatloaf on the table.
It was a union wage, he railed, that put the clothes on our backs and afforded the opportunity for my brothers and sisters to go to college if they wanted, something my parents or grandparents never did.
These cracks became more apparent in my own father’s political affiliation when his own plant closed and was demolished before his death.
Tight environmental regulations and the aging conditions of the power plants forced Firstenergy to pull the plug.
My own union dad became disenfranchised by both parties and grumbled more about Washington and politicians in general.
While he never uttered the nowfamous phrase “Drain the Swamp,” he probably could have coined it himself.
Aside from the infamous “Proud Republican” bumper sticker incident, my parents never publicly declared their politics. However, many neighbors proudly bled blue.
That’s certainly not the case in Conneaut now.
The sea of Democratic signs of my youth are now a patchwork of political leanings, with signs and flags for both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
I know signs can’t vote, but it seems that Trump may have an edge, at least in this small corner of the political landscape.
Main Street is still lined with American flags — this is one of those places where they keep them up all year round — and many empty storefronts.
The Rainbow Cafe is still serving up its signature pizzas and stromboli, just as it has since the 1940s.
The pizza tastes just like I remember, with a slightly curved-up crust and cheese and sauce bubbled right to its crisp edge. The waitress says she packaged four pizzas the day before for a former resident visiting from Florida, who planned to take them on the plane in her carry-on bag.
Just down the block is another familiar fixture, the Orlando Brothers Golden Dawn.
The independent grocery store has been around since the 1970s, when A&P pulled up stakes and moved out of town.
If you give the store a call, you can dial your party’s extension or, “if you are on a rotary phone,” you can simply hold the line.
Don’t have a phone?
You can simply walk in through the entrance from Main Street and find a pay phone on the wall. And yes, it still works, as long as you have a dime to put in the slot.
For me, the store is like walking back in time and visiting a dear old friend.
It hasn’t changed much, aside from the price of a pound of chip-chopped ham.
I can still see my late father pushing a cart with one rattling wheel down the aisle as he grumbled about the price of peaches.
If I were with my mother, I could always persuade her to buy a fresh pepperoni roll or two or three or four from the in-store bakery.
Joe Orlando said they have been selling pepperoni rolls as long as he can remember —- and that goes all the way back to 1977, when he took over the store from A&P.
They sell more pepperoni rolls than they can count and even have out-oftown folks call in (usually not on a rotary phone) to have them shipped out of state.
He’s not sure why everyone craves them so much.
They are made the same way today as they were all those years ago.
Joe said they simply take some bread dough and some slices of pepperoni, then roll and bake them like a small dinner roll.
Although the Golden Dawn grocery name went out of fashion in the 1990s, Joe said they decided to keep it along with the iconic sun logo that still shines on its plastic grocery bags.
He’s now “retired” and his son, Mark, runs the store. Its 50 employees include Sue Swigunski, who has been there since its first day.
It was just going to be a “temporary” gig, she says with a laugh, to help pay off some bills for her then-young family. But she never left.
Joe, 78, said he still putters around the store and tends to the 16 apartments he rents out upstairs.
The secret to the store’s success is sort of like the pepperoni rolls, Joe said, and that is to keep it simple and familiar; the biggest thing, he says, is to know your customers.
Golden Dawn offers some newer items, like a selection of craft beers for the hipsters. Its real bread and butter is keeping staples, like the pepperoni rolls, baked fresh every day and more traditional offerings that chain groceries typically don’t hassle with.
Joe points to the meat case, noting the store still makes its own fresh ham loaf mix.
It’s a combination of ground smoked ham and fresh pork that is cooked like a meatloaf for just plain comfort food.
People love it so much, Joe said, that they have regular customers who call in to make sure some is set aside for them.
“The younger generation, I’m not so sure,” Joe said of the old-school dish. “But the older generation still loves and eats this stuff.”
Joe said it has been sad to have a front-row seat for the decline of the town’s once-bustling downtown.
But then, he adds, he’s also watched the rise and decline of the shopping plazas that popped up in town, too.
It’s hard to single out the reason for their demise.
Joe said there was a collective sense, shared by his father, that Conneaut was a “forgotten corner” of the state when it came to politicians in Columbus and Washington.
The town’s future may lie in its very beginning.
It is here that it is said that Moses Cleaveland landed on July 4, 1796, at the mouth of the Conneaut Creek and established Port Independence.
Cleaveland quickly moved on in search of greener pastures and a deeper port. Just 18 days later, he landed in what would eventually become his namesake city, with a slight spelling modification, at the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.
With its industrial success in the rearview mirror for the moment, Conneaut is banking on tourism dollars to spur new economic activity among new restaurants and related businesses. Trendy restaurants are helping to attract boaters and tourists to the city’s harbor and large beach area.
Houses that had fallen into disrepair are being flipped into vacation rentals for visitors or weekend getaways for families.
Occasionally, a customer will stroll into the grocery store in flip flops with a Biden mask or a Make America Great Again hat.
But Joe’s son, Mark, said, for the most part, partisan politics have not made it to Main Street — at least among those who call Conneaut home yearround.
A bigger argument is more likely to break out between Browns and Steelers fans.
On this particular subject, Mark said, the town is pretty evenly split.
I can attest to that.
My father was a Steelers fan.
I was a proud Browns fan.