Is it too early to draw long-term lessons from this pandemic?
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Is it too early to draw long-term lessons from this pandemic? One interesting bit of advice I recently heard from a fellow Texan went like this: "If you're not taking notes yet, start. Because you're gonna want to remember and tell your grandkids what we went through years from now." That mixture of history and sentimentality caught my imagination, so I figured I'd regret it if I didn't start keeping my own little quarantine diary. One of the earliest entries includes a reflection of how authorities have been trying to strike an awful balance between two seeming inevitabilities: a public health crisis and economic destruction. Too early to draw long-term lessons? Probably. But we keep looking for clues, as reporters keep working on that first draft of history we call the news. As you listen to some stories from the past week below, I'd be interested what lessons you hear emerging from this unprecedented moment. You know where to find us: on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or via email. As always, thanks for supporting your local station – and we'll see you on the radio.
- David Brown
Work safe, Texas. Texas Work Comp Insurance

In Tightly Knit Nazareth, Texas, A Rash Of COVID-19 Cases


After a high school basketball tournament in early March, 10 people in the city have tested positive for COVID-19. One person has died.
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Visitors And Vacationers Put Rural Texans At Risk


People “escaping” more densely populated areas for rural communities could bring COVID-19 to places inadequately equipped to handle the disease.
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Still A Go-Go, But Kathy Valentine Wants Fans To Know She’s A Lot More


Being in the Go-Go’s was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. But, Kathy Valentine writes in her new memoir, that fulfillment came at the expense of her well-being.
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A Tribute To H-E-B Grocery Workers, In Chalk


Alex Abbott didn’t think anyone at H-E-B would see the drawing on her driveway, but she still wanted to show solidarity with workers.
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While my mission as a photo and video journalist for KUT Austin has stayed the same, so many functional and personal aspects of my work have changed since I began local reporting on the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 has become its own beat. Nearly all the reporting across our usual topics – education, transportation, the economy, health , etc. – is now coronavirus reporting. And the functional aspects of photo/video reporting have all changed due to the pandemic as well: from keeping myself and my gear disinfected, to extra alertness driving from assignment to assignment across town, to how I interact with subjects. (It’s not my usual style to holler from the street across people’s front yards to snap their portraits.) But I’ve welcomed the challenge to keep myself safe and sharp amidst these shifts, because what hasn’t changed is the journalistic mission: the curiosity that leads me into communities and people’s lives, and the responsibility to respectfully share their stories through sound and picture. You can see regularly updated photos of our “new normal” on the KUT Austin Flickr page.
- Gabriel C. Pérez
@cperezgabriel
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