COVID-19 threat hits hard when it hits home

COVID-19 couldn’t happen here, to anyone we know; but then it does.

As some of you may be aware, I have been moonlighting from my Ledger job as a sports writer and serving as a Public Information Officer for the Sanders County commissioners’ office since the pandemic first started back in mid-March.

As such, I have been intimately familiar with the local COVID-19 story from the very start, and have watched as the national infection numbers soared, first in far-away places like New York and fairly nearby locales like Seattle.

Then it started spreading to other places, such as high-risk areas where meat-packing plants operate. As America watched each passing, painful day in horror, the numbers would increase in one part of the country and then would slowly ebb down in others.

But in Montana, particularly in our little part of Montana, we have been free of any confirmed coronavirus infections to date and seem to be living in sort of a disease-free haven – a cocoon of false security – here in Sanders County.

Approaching our third full month of COVID-19 restrictions, most people were probably beginning to believe that it not only would not happen here, it could not happen here.

But then it did. At least in my world, beginning at my sister’s house in Pasco last week.

To the point, my brother-in-law, who has been battling the effects of Parkinson’s disease for years (and is one of those highly susceptible individuals with pre-existing conditions officials are always talking about) is currently fighting a life-and-death battle with COVID-19. He has been hospitalized, put into a medically-induced coma and placed on a ventilator since early last week.

His condition has improved slightly over the last several days, but doctors don’t know when or if the respirator can be removed.

Meanwhile, my sister and her teenage son are in quarantine in their home in Pasco, and, as her brother, I simply can’t stop worrying about her and her family. She is in anguish because she cannot be with her husband of over 30 years, right when he would seem to need her most due to the cruelness of this novel coronavirus.

Like her, I wish I could help somehow, but feel powerless to do so. Kind of like I am sure how all families affected by COVID-19 feel – more than willing to do something to make things better, but not allowed that opportunity by this monstrous disease.

As I have attempted to sway public opinion toward the side of consciousness of the disease during my information officer work for the county these last few weeks, I have repeatedly been discouraged by how people around here seem to think COVID-19 is not real, or that it is not near as bad as it is painted to be by the national media.

But this is not the national media, this is The Sanders County Ledger right here in small-town Thompson Falls, Montana, and we can now tell you that COVID-19 is very much real, and is happening in towns and cities near to you, and to people and families dear to you.

— John Hamilton