The masked employee behind the lobby desk inside Hyatt House in downtown Indianapolis said his hotel had only a 20% occupancy rate these past few weeks. He may as well have been talking about the entire city from what I could tell this past weekend.
Our state’s capital city didn’t feel like a ghost town, but it was obviously haunted by apparitions of a public health pandemic. Most downtown businesses remained closed. Pedestrian traffic was light. Vehicle traffic was steady but nowhere near what it’s usually like on a beautiful spring weekend. Only a small minority of residents and visitors wore masks.
I stayed in Indianapolis because I couldn’t get a refund on my hotel reservation, arranged months ago for the Indy Mini half marathon race, scheduled for May 2. It was canceled of course due to the pandemic and subsequent restrictions. My fiancé and I have been running that event for several years, each year enjoying different aspects of that “little” big city.
I wasn’t sure if we should make the trip this year considering everything. I also wasn’t sure what the hotel would look like with all the new public health safeguards in the hotel industry. As I read in a Chicago Tribune story while in Indy, “…in a post-pandemic world, safe is the new sexy.”
If this is the case, the upscale 15-story Hyatt House was a temptress of precautionary protections – individually wrapped apples in the lobby, tighter security measures, additional disinfectant measures, grab-and-go breakfast buffet, and a closed pool and fitness center. I didn’t get the impression that we were checking in to a petri dish of potential health hazards.
While there, I learned that all of the Hyatt properties in the U.S. will have its own hygiene manager by September. Hotels are forced to implement new measures as occupancy rates hit record lows across the country, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Our personal health felt even more protected because we saw only a handful of other guests during our stay. We didn’t once share an elevator with anyone. We didn’t share any space inside the hotel with other guests. We dined atop an outdoor patio as another couple sat across the way.
This particular interaction, or lack thereof, served as a microcosm for my entire experience in Indy, where public spaces were surprisingly crowded with people. I couldn’t tell how many were residents versus tourists, though I was tempted to conduct an informal survey to find out. As well as to ask their stance on social distancing vs. social disobedience.
Instead, I curiously studied their behavior while we bicycled along the city’s Cultural Trail, my new favorite trail in the country. It zig-zagged through Indy’s historic districts, downtown area, and connecting outlying regions. These trails were packed with walkers, joggers and bikers. It felt a bit like Chicago’s lakefront trail, though not as jammed in previous normal times.
If not for noticing the occasional facial mask or scarf, I’d never know about any governmental restrictions or CDC recommendations. People played sports together in parks. Some children climbed on playground equipment (despite public-speaker warnings). Sun-bathers basked in their newfound freedom to be outdoors. (Watch a video on my Facebook page.)
There’s nothing like a postcard-perfect 80-degree day to challenge our loyalties between public health and personal habits. I would like to think I balanced between the two, happily bicycling for nearly 20 miles of city-scape while cautiously not interacting closely with a single person. I called it drive-by tourism. Or in our case, ride-by tourism.
If Indianapolis is any indication, our state is indeed reopening. I concluded that Hoosiers in our largest city were publicly demonstrating in the streets. Not through organized protests but by simply returning to their lives – a nonverbal discussion between social distancing and social disobedience.
On Friday, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb announced a relaxation of business restrictions, allowing more manufacturers, retailers and shopping malls to reopen under new public health guidelines. (Not yet in Marion and Lake counties, the two hardest hit counties for COVID-19 cases and deaths.)
Broader metrics will be needed to determine the smartest and safest plan to reopen the country: the rise or fall of COVID-19 cases; testing capacity to trace its spread; and data to determine if there are enough hospital beds and ICU ventilators if the virus spikes.
As of Monday, 32 states including Indiana have at least partially reopened through the loosening of public restrictions. Too soon? No one knows for sure, not even our governmental leaders who sometimes forget to practice what they teach.
That same day, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb apologized for posing for a photo Saturday with two people at a Nashville restaurant in which none of the three were wearing protective masks, according to an Associated Press story. That photo was taken one day after he issued a plan that included recommendations for such masks be worn in public until mid-June.
In a statement, Holcomb said he left his mask in a car while picking up his carryout order from the restaurant.
“It was a lapse in my usual vigilance,” Holcomb said.
I don’t blame him, despite his presumed position as a model Hoosier. Like I said, this pandemic is challenging our adherence to public health mandates vs. decades of personal habits. I’m not sure if he suffered a lapse in judgment as much as a temporary layoff of model citizenship.
Most Americans are similarly conflicted with thoughts of hope vs. concern, new mandates vs. old habits, public obedience vs. perceived oppression. Along the way, each of us will likely apologize – just as our governor did – about having a lapse in our usual vigilance.
