Coronavirus Live Updates: Confirmed Death Toll Nears 100,000 Worldwide

For centuries, the Amish community in central Ohio has been famously isolated from the hustle of the outside world. Homes still lack telephones or computers. Travel is by horse and buggy. Home-sewn clothing remains the norm. And even now, as the virus rages in the country at large, there is resistance from people sustained by communal life to the dictates of social distancing that have brought the economy to a halt — in Amish country as everywhere else.

But as the virus creeps ever closer, the Amish community is joining the fight.

On April 1, John Miller, a manufacturer in Sugarcreek, Ohio, with deep connections to the Amish community of Central Ohio, got a call from Cleveland Clinic. The hospital system was struggling to find protective face masks for its 55,000 employees, plus visitors. Could his team sew 12,000 masks in two days?

Mr. Miller appealed to Abe Troyer, a leader in the Amish community. A day later, Mr. Troyer had signed up 60 Amish clothes makers who worked from home, and the Cleveland Clinic’s order was soon on its way.

The Amish are not immune to the virus’s rampage. As of Thursday, Holmes County, where the nation’s largest Amish community resides, had only three confirmed coronavirus cases, but the pandemic has idled hundreds of Amish craftspeople and artisans, and Amish people do not apply for federal unemployment benefits.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/coronavirus-updates-usa.html