Covid Is Now Affecting Oklahoma Water Supply
Since March of 2020, Covid-19 and the global pandemic have hit home for a lot of people around the world. I know my family has at least one major loss due to the disease, and the more mainstream infotaiment and social media pushes out wild conspiracy theories of the vaccine, the more inclined my family members are to not accepting it into their veins. From schools to churches, grocery stores to auto dealerships, coronavirus has affected a lot of random things. Here's a really odd tale of how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting Oklahoma water supplies.
Norman is the first city in Oklahoma to advise water conservation this year due to the pandemic, and it all about oxygen usage at the water treatment facility.
What does oxygen have to do with water treatment? A lot as it turns out. Just like every other municipality and rural water district in Oklahoma, potable drinking water is treated much the same with chlorine. Some districts add minerals for taste, others don't, but Norman goes the step further and treats their water with ozone.
Before you guess, it's not that epic whiff you smell when you plug in an ancient piece of electronic technology, it's chemically produced specifically for water treatment using oxygen as the catalyst to create it. When electricity or UV is exposed to oxygen, ozone is produced. The ozone is then into the water which in turn removes solids like iron, manganese, and copper plus it kills and sterilizes bacteria, viruses, and other smelly compounds improving both taste and smell.
So what does this have to do with Covid-19?
We're hitting a point across the United States where pure oxygen generation can't keep up with every industry needing it. The water sterilization process with ozone can't happen without industrial oxygen, and the longer the pandemic lingers on at the current record status, people in hospitals and home care need that oxygen more.
What does that mean for Norman water consumers? If they get to a point where the ozone process cannot be done, it could mean any number of things. Boil before consuming advisories, smelly water, rust staining, and any number of first world problems.
Will it have lasting effects? Depends on if we, as a species, can find the fortitude to actually start taking proactive measures towards fighting this global disease to ease the burdens each political side is blaming the other for. While it's been impossible to get people on board with vaccinations in any kind of meaningful statistic, it might be far easier to convince people to inject Covid-19 into everyone in the world in a very short time-frame just to get the herd immunity goal where it needs to be. Yes it'll kill a bunch of people and give stress to a problematic healthcare system, but at this point in the wild conspiracy theory driven mess the pandemic is, there would probably be people lining up for it.
For the record, before I start getting the hateful emails about how I'm supposedly "pushing vaccines on people" and whatnot, I'm not. If you want one, they're available. If you don't, it's your body and your right to not. It's sad I have to include that just to avoid the hoards of emails about aborted fetuses in vaccines (fake news) microchips (more fake news) and all of the other crazy ramblings of strangers on facebook.
If things continue to go as they've been going recently, time will tell whether we pick life for a few over clean water for the all in a truly worrisome start to what could end up a dystopian world.