DK'S GRIND

Kovacevic: Anyone else feel that rumble?

Dejan Kovacevic
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PPG Paints Arena's main facade, Uptown. - DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS

Before long, it won't matter what's right, what's wrong: Society's going to reopen.

I can feel it, quite literally.

Our home in the Strip District is right next to a large construction site and, until coronavirus closed up civilization in early March, we'd long been used to the burrowing, beeping and barking of the hard-hat crews and big machinery. And for the several weeks since then, that specific silence felt most menacing of all.

Shortly after sunrise yesterday morning, the rumblings returned. Our floor shook. The windows rattled. My 14-year-old son Marko, who normally couldn't be woken if he were being moshed at a Kiss concert, leaped out of bed.

"They're back!" the boy exclaimed.

Yep. And the rest of us are getting there, too.

My wife Dali and I, embracing the sunshine, warmth and welcome construction noise, perked up ourselves and strolled over to Penn-Mac for some fresh prosciutto and feta. And though we wore these miserable masks, then followed store rules by slipping on plastic gloves, then steered six feet clear at every turn, this was different, too. For the first time I'd seen, people were speaking. And smiling. (We're all getting better at reading eyes and cheeks now, huh?) And even laughing. And asking each other something beyond the standard, 'How's everything with your family?'

Can you feel that?

I'm not going to pop up on a soapbox here. Not this time. People are free to believe what they wish, to follow whichever facts they wish, to form their own stances on whether we'll be reopening too soon.

No, I'm just here today to offer this: We're reopening. And, as I've forecast all along, we're reopening when we think it's OK, not when we're told it's OK.

Case in point: State guidelines say construction's permitted to restart in Allegheny County this coming Friday. As in, uh, not yesterday.

Another case in point: Small, allegedly 'non-essential' businesses from here through Downtown are quietly, subtly reopening, desperate for revenue. State guidelines say that's not supposed to happen in Allegheny County until May 8. But it is.

Yet another case in point: There's more movement, more recreation, more cars and trucks on the roads and bridges. A drive-through Starbucks I visited a week ago was barren, the barista at the window giggling about how I was their first customer in an hour. That same Starbucks this past weekend had a line stretching around the building and spilling out onto the nearby street.

We talk a lot in sports about momentum swings. We're unmistakably within one.

Why?

Maybe it's the way we're wired as Americans, historically, to resist restrictions. Maybe it's that the coronavirus response has been bungled at every level of government, from top to bottom, and a loss of trust has us tuning out everyone of authority. Maybe it's that we're seeing -- or grasping at -- news or data about the condition that's more upbeat, like this:

People who've picked sides on this stuff, commonly with political motivations, will take what they want from that. But New York state's heavily anticipated study projected a broader infection rate of 14.9 percent. Applying my own math here: That state's population is 19.4 million. Its total official case count is 291,996, or 1.5 percent of the population. So if that 14.9 percent infection rate is even remotely reflective of reality, roughly 10 times as many people have had this condition than previously thought.

That, paired with four other much smaller but similar surveys, have now produced strikingly similar results. And powerfully important, too, since they'd slash the fatality rate to a fraction of what it's been. New York state's current official fatality rate, measuring cases vs. deaths, is 5.9 percent. Applying the math above, it'd be 0.59 percent.

No, that's not the common flu. Don't say it, and don't think it, because that'd be flat-out dumb. The flu's fatality rate is 0.1 percent, so this coronavirus remains six times as deadly. Not to mention the potential terror that always arises from the as-yet-unknown:

Still, it's not what was initially feared, regardless of the degree. Which has and will continue to influence how we feel.

And how we feel, it seems, is that we'll figure this thing out for ourselves. Hopefully using our heads -- and washing our hands -- along the way.

• Sports won't be different. I wrote about that Sunday and, since then, the NBA's cemented a plan to reopen facilities to players by May 8, albeit a week later than the original outlook. A 16-page league memo obtained by ESPN offered detail akin to what Spain's La Liga presented to the government there, and it kept things similarly safe: Four players max in the gym at any one time. One supervising staffer. No coaches. A 12-foot distance between players on the court.

That might not seem like much. It's a shoot-around, basically. But here again, it's the feel, the momentum that'll make the impact.

• All of our sports leagues have no excuse not to be making plans. Not necessarily action but plans. Even if they're one step at a time, like the NBA's.

• Pennsylvania's got 441 nursing homes and, within those homes, 990 people officially have died from coronavirus. That's two-thirds of all the state's deaths from coronavirus.

That's a crime of epic proportions, in our commonwealth and everywhere. Don't tell me that's not more controllable. Don't tell me there isn't a way to dramatically improve that specific situation in a single setting, to save precious lives and, thus, slash that fatality rate that much further.

• We've tested 1.6 percent of our population in America, now more than two months into this crisis.

That's next on the crime list, regardless who's responsible.

And if anyone's priority in discussing any of this is party-vs.-party politics ... man, that a terribly lost perspective. Not to mention the hollowest one possible.

• Sorry, just not in the mood to write actual sports in the moment. These days come and go through this episode. I'll get back in the swing today, as we'll be hearing from the Pirates' Ben Cherington and the Penguins' Tristan Jarry, both at 2 p.m. Looking forward to it.

• In the meantime, a reminder that a return to normalcy won't come without continued commitment to everyone in our community:

Trevor Williams is exactly that real.

We'll get there. We will.

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