The Goldenrod's Friday Flea Market: May 16-20

Counties without *any* COVID testing sites, a weekend float down the Red River, tools to explore your energy bill and more.

It’s time for The Goldenrod’s Friday Flea Market, where—much like in the thrift stores, antique malls and flea markets across our region—you can expect to find a little bit of everything. If you’ve ever accidentally unearthed a box of questionably-labeled home movies among a well-preserved set of Lenox Village cannisters at an estate sale, you know that sometimes things don’t quite fit—and that’s where the Friday Flea Market comes in. These weekly, catch-all, never-know-what-you’ll-read updates are for *paid subscribers only* so whether you’re interested in the latest festival dispatches, story recommendations, op-ed columns or recipes, take the leap and join us behind the paywall.

And if you’d like to become more involved as part of The Goldenrod’s community coverage, here are three different ways to join the fun (a little something for everyone!):

1. In light of Senate Bill 167, call your local elected officials and ask about their favorite book(s);
2. Become a fair/festival/funnel cake correspondent! $50 base rate;
3. And get ready for a summer full of garden bounty by swapping seeds using our new trading post. (These listings will be going up next Friday, so get your listings in!)

Wherefore Art Thou, Testing Sites?

Much to the chagrin of many Kentuckians (particularly those with children under 5) and the depressing disinterest of others, COVID rates are once again surging across the Commonwealth. It doesn’t take more than a cursory scroll through one’s Facebook feed to realize that the new, recently-morphed variants are causing debilitating symptoms—even in adults who are vaccinated and boosted.

With such a rapid uptick in infections—and a recommendation from the CDC that at least one-third of people in the U.S. should consider masking based on their COVID risk—you’d think that some potential mitigation strategies would be coming our way via state and local government. But, alas, it does not seem that way. Professionally-administered PCR and “rapid” tests, which are far more effective at catching COVID early on than the home-based versions, are difficult to find across the rural reaches of southern and eastern Kentucky as testing sites that shuttered back in March remain that way.

In fact, five counties—Fleming, Bath, Robertson, Menifee and Morgan—have no COVID testing sites at all.

This is a major problem for accurate data collection, to be sure, but it’s also troubling because “official” PCR tests are often required by employers to excuse people from their jobs. If COVID testing sites are nearly impossible to access, there will be tons of folks pressured into showing up to work while they’re shedding the virus left-and-right, getting even more people sick (at least quasi-unwittingly) and continuing a vicious merry-go-round of working-through-a-pandemic that we can’t seem to stop from whirring out of control in this country.

If you think you currently have allergies or a cold or are feeling exhausted by the weight of the world on your shoulders (plus a mysterious sore throat), test and test again! It often takes testing multiple days in a row using home COVID tests before the virus appears—as many people have learned the hard way. Also, if you’re out of at-home tests, free kits are once again available from our friends at the USPS. Delivered right to your door! Get on it!