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Letter to the Editor 5-29-20

Letter to the Editor:
Thank you Concordia and Cloud County for doing an amazing job at helping to keep our community safe and limiting this virus from completely destroying our community like we have seen in so many areas of our country, with the death toll in America now topping 100,000.     Change is always difficult. There was a call to completely put a halt to our normal day-to-day life, and our community really came together to help each other through the plethora of challenges that would have seemed unimaginable 6 months ago. “Home school” took on a whole new meaning. We learned a totally unheard of concept: social distancing. Our parents and grandparents in nursing homes learned a whole new level of loneliness. Many in our community were forced not to work, thus not able to provide for their families. Others were working, and nervous that they were risking their lives and those of their family, just by going to work everyday. On the positive, there have been more donations to the food bank and little food pantry, and new Facebook groups popping up to offer help to community members in need. Businesses have been hurting, no doubt. However, we have also seen entrepreneurs doing what they do best; coming up with new ideas on how to improve their business and continue to make money through these changes. It was the worst of situations that really brought out the best of our community.  

Everyone is ecstatic that we are on the road back to re-opening and normalcy. However, this beast has changed our lives. Life will likely never be the same as it was before the virus. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the sooner you learn this and come to accept it, the sooner you can start moving forward in life. The normal now will definitely look different than the normal prior to COVID-19. Wearing masks, new normal for now, deal with it. Life will not be the same now as it was last year. Again, deal with it. (Let that sink in for a minute.) A battle cry of, “Open it up/Open the economy/Open everything!” is not helpful or practical. For those of you who take enjoyment out of complaining about laws/regulations/services/people in our community without offering solid suggestions regarding ways to improve our community, shame on you. Facebook and other social media is a great way for everyone to voice their opinion on, well, basically everything in everyday life. However, if you are going to continuously complain about the way that our city, community, county, state, schools, and businesses are run, just stop…unless you are going to become part of the solution. Attend city and county meetings, contact your local officials with your thoughts, or run for public office. Be part of the solution, not part of the negativity and problem in our community. Everyone has something to contribute to our community, use that to help improve our community as we forge through this new life.  

If you’ve actually read through President Trump’s and Governor Kelly’s plans, they are actually very similar. (I know, shocking, right? Feel free to look them both up.) The governor’s plan for reopening the state is a bit more detailed than the president’s and actually a very smart plan. (Just to put this out there, I don’t identify as a Democrat or Republican, I’m not political. I agree with laws based in facts, ethics, and common sense.) We have to be able to monitor our county during re-opening for an increase in cases since we will be having more travel to outside communities and more contact with each other again. In the current plan that our county is following (which closely follows the governor’s previous plan), our health department will be able to do contact tracing on new cases effectively with the appropriate timeline. If we were to go without any group-size regulations, our rural community’s health department would be incapable of effectively doing contact tracing and testing on a gathering of say, 100 people, at this point in time. With the gradual reopening that we are continuing, it allows us to more readily detect an increase in cases of COVID-19 and effective containment of the virus before it affects our community at large. Due to the actions of our state legislature and governor, they really left us kind-of high-and-dry in terms of guidelines and said, “You’re on your own.” Now that we are on our own, we are doing the best we can with available information on this new virus, with ever-changing information, on how to continue to keep our community safe, while trying to help improve our businesses and help the continued thriving of our beloved community. And just to be clear, we are NOT being more restrictive on opening. Our guidelines are actually slightly less restrictive that the governor’s plan in terms of helping all of our community’s business open up. The few additional stipulations included in terms of self-serve food and beverage will be removed on June 8th with appropriate health precautions implemented. The mandatory implementation of masks for beauty/barber shops is an additional safety precaution in order to help prevent spread of the virus while still allowing business to take place. Remember, if we have an outbreak of the virus in our town/community, things go to shut-down again, which will be extremely detrimental to our economy. We are all on the same side. Public health is trying to implement best practices to help prevent a public health situation that would further disable our economy.  

I have been hired as Cloud County’s health officer. While this is my second job, and definitely not a glamorous or lucrative one (my salary for county health officer is public information), I certainly take this job seriously and with the same moral/ethical obligation as my main job at the hospital. It is my duty to help maintain the health and help prevent the spread of infectious disease in our county. We have to be able to open our community and economy in a safe manner. I encourage all of our community leaders to take this same personal responsibility for our community. We live here, work here, make memories here. Our lives are made here. If we are leaders in the community, elected or otherwise, we have to take a personal interest and responsibility for what goes on here. We cannot sit idly by and let others take the blame for the downfall of our livelihood/business/community/legacy. Again, do not point fingers, man-up and be part of the solution.  

Rural Kansas is full of some of the hardest working, most genuinely caring, community-oriented people in America. We all need to continue to work together and offer solutions to help build our county in order to survive and grow from this pandemic.  

Dorothy Breault, M.D.

 

Concordia Blade-Empire

510 Washington St.
Concordia, KS 66901