Proposed roundabout threatens historic home
Recently there has been publicity about the potential loss of the Hastings farmland where the proposed roundabout would be located. There is another farm and historical home at risk as well.
I live at 27 Kingwood Pike, in a brick home that overlooks the intersection of Dorsey Avenue, Green Bag Road and Kingwood Pike. To Morgantown natives who have lived here over the last 100 years, they may know it as the Anderson farmhouse. My great-great-grandfather purchased the farm in 1900, as an addition to his farm that occupied where the Kennedy Federal Correctional Institute now exists. His son, JD Anderson, of local significance, built his own house and farm buildings around 1920. Now a century later, my young children are the sixth generation to live and experience agriculture on our farm.
Due to unsuitable soil conditions for Green Bag Road at inception in the 1960s and large slips, all structures of the farm were condemned and razed, with the exception of my home. Now with more proposed soil destabilization and high cut walls on Green Bag Road and Kingwood Pike, our historical home is at risk, and WVDOH may finish the destructive path it started.
To improve vehicle and pedestrian flow, another option needs to be considered as the leading alternative at the Kingwood Pike and Green Bag Road intersection. Center lanes only on Green Bag, with signal arrows allowing protected turns onto Dorsey Avenue and Kingwood Pike would be efficient. Dorsey Avenue and Kingwood Pike do not need added lanes to address traffic flow, which in turn reduces construction costs, reduces property acquisition costs and does not displace any residences.
Roundabouts can be cost-effective, when construction is new or large public rights-of-way already exist, but that’s not the case here. In fact, the roundabout could be more dangerous for pedestrian traffic to cross avenues, as drivers may not need to yield or look in both directions as they enter.
I’m asking the community to help support these local farms by contacting our state representatives, or WVDOH in Charleston and demanding a better alternative for everyone.
Garrett Richards
Morgantown
How should a COVID vaccine be distributed?
Whether your political blood runs red or blue, the recent successes of the COVID vaccine program are raising hopes for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe the vaccines will be distributed and push the disease to its demise.
However, the latest issue of WIRED magazine raises the question of how we can do this fast and most effectively in its article “Who gets the first shot.” They suggest that we target superspreaders, from social butterflies to people who by necessity interact with many other people for more than a few moments.
The CDC is planning how to distribute the vaccines during the early phases when supply is limited and later when there will be plenty of supplies. The key principles are to discourage low-risk people from crowding out the superspreaders and high-risk folks early without putting in so many bureaucratic hurdles that people turned away won’t come back.
What happens first, everyone agrees on. Medical and emergency front line workers get vaccinated first. But the next question is whether to vaccinate the middle age and elderly and those with underlying medical conditions, or to vaccinate potential superspreaders.
Scientists approach this by assuming people are greedy, whether it’s hoarding toilet paper or vaccines. It’s in the interest of each person to get the vaccine, but it’s in everyone’s interest to slow the spread of COVID. Limits blunt the worst parts of the greed while not dampening motivation.
Putting limits on who gets the vaccine early and scaling back the limits over time to let the highest risk people get the vaccine makes the most sense. First vaccinate medical workers and first responders, then essential workers, then nursing home residents and the elderly. At all points, there will be mismatches between the number of vaccine doses and the number of people seeking the shot but, after the first week, it makes sense to apply the greedy principle and vaccinate everyone who wants one. It is highly likely that the people vaccinated with this approach will be either high-risk or potential superspreaders because they were motivated to come.
Steven Knudsen
Morgantown
