On Friday, October 30, members of the news media in Durango and Pagosa Springs logged into a ZOOM press conference hosting by San Juan Basin Public Health (SJBPH), to hear several local leaders and officials express their concerns about the mounting number of coronavirus infections within the SJBPH district. The district includes two counties: Archuleta and La Plata.
The two communities are experiencing slightly different per capita infection rates, with La Plata at about 0.7%, and Archuleta at about 0.5%. But both counties saw confirmed cases increase during October.
I don’t recall ever before being invited to a press conference hosted by SJBPH. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. But I caught this one.
Most of the ‘panelists’ sharing their viewpoints during the press conference hailed from La Plata County; only Pagosa Springs Medical Center CEO Dr. Rhonda Webb and Archuleta County Commissioner Steve Wadley had been invited to represent Archuleta County. Commissioner Wadley, as it turned out, did not participate.
Here, we are listening to SJBPH Executive Director Liane Jollon:
“What we know about southwest Colorado is, eight months into this pandemic, we’ve really been an outlier in our success in fighting COVID-19. We have ‘in-person’ options for kids to be in school; we have a college drawing students from all over the country; we haven’t identified outbreaks in our college or in our schools.
“We’ve had a really robust tourism economy; people are aware that our sales tax numbers are up; our airport operated at twice the national average this fall. We had the highest level of occupancy for our lodging, of anywhere in the state. We’ve really done a good job of recovering from this virus, locally, maintaining control of the virus, and getting our economy back open.
“So we are proof that you can do it. We’ve been in the bottom 10 counties across the state for per capita level of virus, up until this time.”
“So, until this time, we’ve been really, really good — southwest Colorado, La Plata County, Archuleta County — at containing the virus and getting things back open.We are a model for how we can do this.
“The problem is, when you’re this successful, COVID-19 starts to be ‘background noise’. We forget how important it is, and we forget how difficult it is to maintain the activities that we’re asking people to do to control virus in our community.
“We want people to know, the worst of this is not over. The virus is roaring back all over the country, and roaring back here in Colorado. And we’re afraid that is going to happen here in southwest Colorado, next.”
I appreciate the work done by Ms. Jollon and her staff at SJBPH, but I question her claim that “we are proof that you can do it.”
I understand that a public health agency would like the population they serve to feel empowered, and in control… would like us to believe that “we’ve been really, really good… at containing the virus and getting things back open” and that we can continue to beat the virus even in the face of rising national infection rates.
Belief is powerful.
I’ve been assuming, meanwhile, that the reason Archuleta County has such a low per capita infection rate resulted from our culture of isolation. We naturally stay at home, partly because we live in a small town where there’s almost nothing to do, in the way of entertainment. We naturally stay at home because we live relatively distanced from our neighbors, on poorly-maintained roads, and we drive only when necessary.
We were fairly anti-social and isolated even before COVID arrived. Our low infection numbers are a happy accident; that’s been my belief all along. And belief is powerful.
But I can understand, if a public health agency looks at Archuleta County’s low infection rate as a success story resulting from effective public health efforts. And they might be absolutely right in giving us — and themselves — credit for Archuleta County’s low rate. Depends on where your beliefs lie.
Here is Ms. Jollon again.
“Currently, in the state of Colorado, we believe that one out of every 219 individuals is infectious at this time. So, activities that you got away with over the last couple of weeks and months, you’re not going to be able to get away with anymore. We have to really double down on our efforts. All across Colorado, counties are tightening their restrictions. We have tightened our a little bit. We are trying really hard to say, ‘if we make the right choices, we can keep our schools open, we can keep kids educated, we can have a workforce that’s able to be out there working and getting paychecks.
“But we have to do this together. All over the state, the testing is not happening at the pace we need it to, public health departments are not able to continue investigating disease; and it this gets away from us now, we’re going to go into a really difficult wintertime.
“So we want to acknowledge that everyone has worked so hard — so hard — to keep us safe so far, and keep us really doing well as a community. It is now time to remind everybody: we have the power, as a community, to do the right things. Stay home whenever we can, work from home if you can, avoid large social gatherings, keep your household guests to the minimum.
“Remember that one in every 219 people is currently infected in the state of Colorado, so this is the time to get tested if you have symptoms. Wear your face coverings, keep your distance, wash your hands, all those things… and we can do this as a community.”