About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (July 23, 2020)
6A Thursday, July 23, 2020 The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com LOCAL New ‘Lost Wall’ mural celebrates diversity Colors of red, yellow, black and white — which represent the melting pot of American cultures — are breathing a spirit of diversity into Gainesville’s Midland arts district with the creation of The Lost Wall. Volunteers from the Gents Club, Hispanic Alli ance GA, Educational Foundation and Museum of Beulah Rucker, the Black History Society, Vision 2030 Public Art Committee, University of North Georgia and other community members spent days completing the project, which was unveiled to the public on Wednesday, July 22. Karen Hawk, who attended UNG when it was known as North Georgia College & State Univer sity, is the original designer of the mural painted in 1974 on the OddFellows Building on Athens/Syca more Street. The building was later demolished, but its mural now lives on at the Midtown Green way thanks to Vision 2030, Hawk and many others. Kelsey Podo Li. £ P Photos by SCOTT ROGERS I The Times Above: Creators of “The Lost Wall” mural gather in midtown Wednesday, July 22, to celebrates its completion. The mural is recreated from the original piece which was once on the side of the OddFellows building on Gainesville’s southside. Cost of the project was $10,000. Left: Artist Karen Hawk and Frank Norton Jr. gather with the creators of the mural. Photos courtesy Beth Buffington Weikel Above left: Church member Beth Buffington Weikel reads during an outdoor service July 19, at Gainesville First United Methodist Church. Above right: Jamey Prickett, one of the pastors at Gainesville First United Methodist Church, speaks during an evening outdoor service. CHURCHES ■ Continued from 1A must register online before the service. Shoulta said many Bible studies and Sunday school groups have shifted to Zoom meetings, and some are meeting outdoors in the church’s larger gathering spaces. And, he added, peo ple are staying in touch with phone calls and cards. Shoulta, who joined First Baptist in March at the beginning of the pandemic, said he has not been able to meet many members of the congregation in person yet. “That is of course sad, but also a necessary reality,” he said. At Prince of Peace Cath olic Church in Flowery Branch, parishioners can watch Mass online or attend in-person, if they follow a few extra precautions. Rob Montepare, the church’s director of communications, said people register online before the service and have their temperatures checked at the door. People are directed to their seats, where pews are marked off so that households can stay 6 feet apart. Montepare said that while the church can usu ally accommodate about 900 people, gatherings are limited to about 200 now. Like the others, masks are required. “It’s just a lot of love, and a lot of smiles behind masks, smiles with our eyes, and just communicating and talking with people and making sure they feel wel come,” Montepare said. Gainesville First United Methodist Church has also found ways to bring people together safely, including a lakeside worship service that people can join online, by radio, in-person or even by boat. The church is also now offering a 7 p.m. out door chapel service on Sun days, the Rev. Scott Hearn said. Another Sunday wor ship service at 10 a.m. is streamed online with no in- person option. Hearn said religious lead ers “did not have a pan demic class in seminary” and are now faced with the challenge of keeping a sense of community during a time of distancing. “People that are used to getting out and about just don’t feel safe now, and we’re trying to stay in touch with them by phone,” Hearn said. “We even have people that will go and have conver sations on front porches and through windows at assisted living places... so people can see faces.” Beth Buffington Weikel, who attended Gainesville First United Methodist’s lakeside worship, called the experience “exceptional.” “Everybody just broke down, and it was such a relief to see everybody, to know that everybody is OK, ” she said. "... For those of us used to weekly worship, four months is a long time to be away from each other, and it was a very sweet service.” Buffington Weikel said that while she was grate ful for the opportunity to go to worship in person, the church community has also stayed in touch remotely. “Thank goodness for texts and emails and phone calls,” she said. “We have a pretty powerful group text where we put out prayer requests, and we put out updates for anyone who is sick.” At McEver Road United Methodist Church, people can come to a drive-in wor ship service, or watch it on Facebook. On Wednesday nights, a contemporary worship service is recorded and put online each Saturday morning. Bible studies and Sunday school classes are meeting over Zoom. “It’s really tough preach ing in front of a camera, and I have to do that twice a week now,” the Rev. Rob Bruce said. “Especially with the drive-in church, people have to be in their cars. They can’t get out. I can see them, and that’s a little bit better. But it’s not like preaching to the con gregation in your sanctuary.” Bruce said the church had planned to reconvene in-per- son Aug. 16, but leadership have decided to monitor the pandemic month-by-month. Reservations will be needed to attend services, he said. Jojo Thomas is director of missions for the Chat tahoochee Baptist Associa tion, which serves about 75 Baptist churches. Thomas said at a worship service, churches are able to con trol more variables than at other church events. Most are not offering services like child care or other events in person, he said, but each church’s situation is different. “Some are rural and very small and in areas where the virus is not as prevalent. Others are in town or south of town, so those precautions look different,” he said. No matter the case, Thomas said, parishes are advised to use credible and reliable sources when seeking information about COVID-19. SCOTT ROGERS I The Times A patient is wheeled into the Northeast Georgia Medical Center emergency room Monday, July 20. COVID-19 ■ Continued from 1A exacerbating fears that asymp tomatic people could be spread ing the virus if they don’t isolate while they wait. “There’s been this obsession with, ‘How many tests are we doing per day?”’ said Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The question is how many tests are being done with results coming back within a day, where the individual tested is promptly isolated and their contacts are promptly warned.” Frieden and other public health experts have called on states to publicly report testing turnaround times, calling it an essential metric to measure prog ress against the virus. The testing lags in the U.S. come as the number of people confirmed to be infected glob ally passed a staggering 15 mil lion on Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. leads the world in cases as well as deaths, which stand at more than 142,000 nationwide. New York, once by far the U.S. leader in infections, has been surpassed by California, though that is partly due to robust testing in a state with more than twice the population of New York. Guidelines issued by the CDC recommend that states lifting virus restrictions have testing turnaround time under four days. The agency recently issued new recommendations against retesting most COVID-19 patients to confirm they’ve recovered. “It’s clogging up the system,” Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant health secretary, told reporters last week. Beyond the economic hurt the testing lags can cause for work ers off the job awaiting results, they pose major health risks too. In Florida, as the state con firmed 9,785 new cases on Wednesday and the death toll rose to nearly 5,500, nursing homes have been under an order to test all employees every two weeks. But long delays for results have some questioning the point. Jay Solomon, CEO of Aviva in Sarasota, a senior community with a nursing home and assisted living facility, said results were taking up to 10 days to come back. “It’s almost like, what are we accomplishing in that time?” Solomon said. “If that person is not quarantined in that 7-10 days, are they spreading without real izing it?” Test results that come back after two or three days are nearly worthless, many health experts say, because by then the window for tracing the persons’ contacts to prevent additional infections has essentially closed. Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University said it’s reasonable to tell people awaiting test results to isolate for 24 hours, but the delays have been unacceptable. “Imagine, you tell a parent with young children to self-iso late for 10 days or more with out knowing they actually have COVID? I mean, that’s ridiculous. That’s actually absurd,” Wen said. U.S. officials have recently called for ramping up screen ing to include seemingly healthy Americans who may be unknow ingly spreading the disease in their communities. But Quest Diagnostics, one of the nation’s largest testing chains, said it can’t keep up with demand and most patients will face waits of a week or longer for results. Quest has urged health care providers to cut down on tests from low-priority individuals, such as those without symptoms or any contact with someone who has tested positive. As testing has expanded, so have mask orders and other mea sures aimed at keeping infections down. The governors of Ohio and Indiana, both Republicans, became the latest to announce statewide mandatory mask orders on Wednesday. The U.S. is testing over 700,000 people per day, up from less than 100,000 in March. Trump administration officials point out that roughly half of U.S. tests are performed on rapid systems that give results in about 15 minutes or in hospitals, which typically process tests in about 24 hours. But last month, that still left some 9 million tests going through laboratories, which have been plagued by limited chemicals, machines and kits to develop COVID-19 tests. There is no scientific consen sus on the rate of testing needed to control the virus in the U.S., but experts have recommended for months that the U.S. test at least 1 million to 3 million people daily. The National Institutes of Health has set up a “shark tank” competition to quickly identify promising rapid tests and has received more than 600 appli cations. The goal is to have new testing options in mass produc tion by the fall. Until then, the backbone of U.S. testing remains at several hundred labs with high-capacity machines capable of processing thousands of samples per day. Many say they could be process ing far more tests if not for global shortages of testing chemicals, pipettes and other materials. Dr. Bobbi Pritt of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says the hospital’s machines are running at just 20% of capacity. Lab technicians run seven dif ferent COVID-19 testing formats, switching back and forth depend ing on the availability of supplies. At Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, lab workers lobby test ing manufacturers on a weekly basis to provide more kits, chem icals and other materials. “There’s no planning ahead, we just do as many as we can and cross our fingers that we’ll get more,” said Dr. Colleen Kraft, who heads the hospital’s testing lab.
