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Collected Item: “A Roadside Appeal”

Give your story a title.

A Roadside Appeal

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Photograph

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

This sign implores Wichita residents to save a life by wearing a protective mask, thereby underscoring face masks' growing importance, when it had been previously dismissed as a relatively ineffective non-pharmaceutical intervention early in the pandemic. Not only does this sign attempt to reinforce the city's mask mandate, its wording also hints how COVID-19 had become a threat to all age demographics by the summer of 2020. At the time of this photograph, the average age of an infected patient in Wichita had dropped from the mid-60s in the spring to 37, thus Wesley Hospital's appeal for everyone to do their part to help stop a rapidly accelerating and demographically expanding contagion.

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Aaron Peterka

Give this story a date.

2020-08-04
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