21. Air Conditioning

Years ago, then U of Oregon law professor Charles Wilkinson said that Indians were smarter than to inhabit the lowlands of Arizona. They are unlivable in the summer, so the Indians would, like some early white visitors to the area, spend some wintertime in the low drylands, but would move to higher and milder climates in summer. In the last 100 years, Midwest and northern winters chased white people south, and air conditioning has made many of them year-around residents.

Recently, one of the university or state health department coronavirus wags—and now every college and health department, as well as news service and “think tank,” must have an expert—said that being outside was the safest thing to do with Covid. Masks are great, he said, but the surest way to stay away from contagion is to be in the open air and at least six feet distant from any other human being. Chances of contagion are reduced “almost to nil,” he said.

Another wag—I don’t think the same one, but I can’t keep them all straight—did say that air conditioning was a hazard and not a help to the spread of the disease.  I think that was after the Arizona church that hosted the president was showing off its air purification system.

Now I listen to the news and look at the map. The Covid hot spots are Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. And in California make that the hot, dry Los Angeles area. Our own Northwest hot spots—Umatilla County in Oregon and Yakima in Washington—say that agricultural workers are involved in the spread. I’m sure that the food processing plants have air conditioning systems that recirculate air and virus, and am pretty sure that field workers, who have the luxury of the great outdoors for 8-10 hours each day, crowd into air conditioned vans on the way back to their crowded dwellings.

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