Some readers know that I lead a dual life: While I own The Monitor and live in Montana for part of the year, I also have a job based in New York that requires me to remain tethered there, as well.
This has made for some jarring dissonance as the COVID-19 crisis has played out over the last few months.
Even though its number of new cases is now finally declining, the New York metropolitan area remains the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic in the United States. My suburban town of 35,000 people has recorded three times as many COVID-19 cases as the entire state of Montana.
The public health risk has been top of mind and in our faces, all the time. Everyone knows someone who has been seriously ill; nearly everyone knows someone who knows someone who has died. Stress and exhaustion creep into everything: During a recent work call, a colleague broke down as a siren – one more of countless ambulances that pass her Manhattan apartment, day and night — interrupted the discussion.
People don’t go out in public without face masks. In fact, even as he relaxed other restrictions, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo just authorized businesses to deny entry to people without face-coverings. For nearly three months, our family has religiously disinfected groceries before they come in the house. We’ve sprayed the mail and UPS packages.
This certainly has colored the way I’ve reported on the effects of the crisis in Jefferson County. Montana, which enjoys the second-lowest proportion of reported COVID-19 cases in the nation, seems like a different planet — especially in the four weeks since Governor Steve Bullock began reopening. It’s hard to square the outward sense of normalcy with the persistent tragedy we’ve witnessed in New York.
You can’t imagine how startling it is for me to walk into a grocery store here and not see another person with a mask; or to enter a restaurant where folks aren’t keeping their distance. When I read about last week’s “Senior Cruise,” which allowed up to four graduating high school students in each car, my first reaction was: “Wow. Really? Is that safe?”
I understand: It almost certainly is safe. Jefferson County has recorded just three COVID-19 cases, and none of those were community-transmitted. Even with a recent uptick, the state is seeing just 10 new cases a day. It’s hard to feel urgency about a threat that isn’t there. And it’s rational to believe, as the economic toll keeps mounting, that Montanans are being unfairly penalized for someone else’s problem – New York’s, among others.
The risk, of course, is that this duality will amplify the us-against-them divide that has set rural Americans against city dwellers, and vice-versa. And that political tension could mask the reality that this crisis isn’t just New York’s, or New Orleans’, or L.A.’s — and that the public health risk of COVID-19 is increasingly real for rural areas.
After an analysis of case data and interviews with public health professionals, The Washington Post concluded recently that “the pandemic that first struck in major metropolises is now increasingly finding its front line in the country’s rural areas.” In the last few weeks, according to a separate study by the Brookings Institution, hot spots have emerged in places like Washington County, Idaho; Forest County, Wisconsin; Todd County, South Dakota; and Washakie County, Wyoming – rural spots with scale, density, and demographics similar to Jefferson County’s.
Tara Smith, an epidemiology professor at Kent State University, told the Post that the rural spread probably won’t take the form of a big, single wave. “It’s going to be hot spots that come and go,” she said. “And I don’t know how well they’re going to be managed.” That’s because “In many of those places, where the health-care system is already stretched thin, even a minor surge in patients is enough to overwhelm,” the Post noted.
I’ve been writing this note as we travel back west. In the week I’ve been away from Montana, a new pandemic of sorts has emerged, as much of the nation erupts in protest over the reprehensible killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Once again, New York is an epicenter: Thousands have come into the streets in anger and grief, and the city has imposed a curfew in an attempt to head off violence and looting. But this time, the epicenters are everywhere: Our car journey has tracked demonstrations in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Madison, and Sunday night, in Sioux Falls, where some people hurled rocks and bottles at police. (As someone we met there marveled: “Sioux Falls?!”)
I see that protests have surfaced across Montana, as well – in Billings, Missoula, Bozeman, and Helena. And I wonder how this new crisis has touched Jefferson County. I hope that people are noticing, and that they care. It would be tragic to write this one off as someone else’s problem.
