EDITORIAL

As With 9/11, City Folks Will Flee

Upstate When Pandemic is Over

Small businesses in small towns like ours, and the small City of Oneonta, are taking a hit right now.
But for businesses that make it through, there may be better days ahead.

At one of the daily briefings of local community leaders by the Governor’s regional representative, it’s said, a Power Point showed how multiple infected travelers – pinpoints, charted through tracings – flew in from Europe to JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports, tightly packed and infecting others.

Landing, the pinpoints scattered into Westchester County, southern Connecticut and northern New Jersey. The ones that went directly into New York City entered the subways and, well, this all added up to the perfect COVID-19 storm.

As of earlier this week, 15,786 of 90,694 deaths were in New York City, some 18 percent of the national toll.

After 9/11, New York City folks flocked north. We all know somebody. (Chuck Williamson of Butternuts Brewery comes to mind; he watched the Towers fall from the front door of his tavern in Red Hook, across the bay.)

The point is, when this is over, people are going to flock Upstate, and not just to getaway. Country living is great. (See excerpt below from Chris Ingraham’s “The Worst Place in America” in June’s Reader’s Digest.)

Think about it. If Oneonta could attract 500 new families with high-tech earners who could work from a distance, and the Cooperstown area, maybe 100, it would be transformative.

And, yes, both communities already have broadband.