When Steve Qunell won a city council seat last year in the city of 8,000, he figured he would be struggling with potholes and affordable housing.
Instead, he finds himself at the center of a raging debate over how to tackle the coronavirus, which is increasing like never before in Montana.
State Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat who finds himself in the home stretch of a tight race for the US Senate and has been reluctant to impose restrictions that could hurt his campaign, called on the counties most affected consider closing bars and applying a mask statewide. mandate.
There was little appetite for it in conservative Flathead County, where the board of health has been dominated by an outspoken doctor who argues the pandemic is a hoax.
It left Whitefish City Council.
“We are the last line of defense,” Qunell, a 49-year-old high school social science teacher, told fellow council members in a public meeting online this week. “Are we going to lead? Or will we just follow the unbelievers around the county?
Places like Whitefish could once afford to view the pandemic as a problem far from big cities. In mid-September, sparsely populated Montana had a death toll of 140.
But that figure has doubled in the past five weeks as a new wave of infections sweeps across the country. More than 85,000 cases were reported across the country on Friday, the most in a single day since the start of the pandemic.
The worst outbreaks are in the rural Midwest and the Rockies. With 4,693 new cases in the past week, Montana had the third highest infection rate in the country, behind only the Dakotas.
Montana’s rise to power has overtaken contact tracing efforts and strained healthcare systems across the state.
And as events in Whitefish show, efforts to stem the exponential increases run counter to a culture that prides itself on robust independence and the absence of government rules.
At the start of the pandemic, Whitefish, a gateway to ski areas and Glacier National Park, acted more decisively than many other communities to contain the virus.
Whitefish Mountain Resort overlooks Whitefish, Mt., Gateway to Glacier National Park.
(Richard Read / Los Angeles Times)
Last spring, city council ordered hotels and short-term rental properties to accommodate only essential workers – a requirement that remained in place until the end of May.
Whitefish was also one of the first towns in Montana to require people to wear masks – though the governor quickly issued a statewide warrant.
Yet from the start there was strong local opposition to these restrictions.
Dr Annie Bukacek, a 62-year-old internist known for her far-right views and opposition to vaccination, led the resistance.
Flathead County Commissioners appointed her to the County Board of Health last December after firing two other doctors with more experience in public health – changes which the Commissioners said were aimed at increasing the diversity of points of view.
Bukacek became a hero of anti-lockdown activists across the country last spring after giving a speech to a local church congregation, alleging the federal government was exaggerating the death toll from coronavirus.
“People are terrorized by fearful craftsmen into giving up their cherished freedoms,” she told members of the Liberty Fellowship.
She wore a lab coat and a stethoscope for her presentation, which was viewed over 860,000 times on YouTube.
The congregation is led by Chuck Baldwin, who is described by the Montana Human Rights Network as “the unofficial reverend of the militia movement.” He defied state orders by continuing to organize in-person services.
Dr. Annie Bukacek, center, in black, joins protesters in Kalispell, Mt., protesting against mask requirements in schools.
Dr Annie Bukacek opposes restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, saying the death toll has been exaggerated.
Bukacek and a small group of allies protest outside schools and government buildings several times a week to demand an end to masking requirements and other state restrictions which they equate to martial law.
Their message seemed plausible to some last summer, as cases and deaths remained low, even as more tourists than expected visited Whitefish and the national park.
Ultimately, although it became clear that Flathead County, a population of 100,000, would not avoid the kind of suffering that so many other parts of the country had suffered.
The first major outbreak in Whitefish hit a nursing home in August, infecting 43 of 52 patients – and ultimately killing 13 of them.
The county’s largest hospital, Kalispell Regional Medical Center, quickly began to see more admissions to its coronavirus ward.
Erica Lengacher, a 46-year-old intensive care nurse who works nights on the ward, could face the stress of seeing patients die. It was part of the job.
More difficult to manage is the indifference that opponents seem to have to basic security measures for victims of the pandemic.
“I just felt a deep sadness that while I saw patients suffering and dying, I felt our community had moved on and didn’t really care,” she says.
“I realize that there is a historic tension between public health and individual freedoms,” she said. “But a good portion of our community flouts the mandate of the mask of the state, and I still can’t understand how it has become so politicized and divisive.”
The number of patients in the coronavirus ward has hovered around 29 in recent days, but officials are hiring more nurses in case things get worse.
The recent outbreaks in Flathead County – where the total number of people known to have been infected has doubled to over 2,800 in the past three weeks – have been attributed to large gatherings at four churches, four weddings, three events policies and two trade shows.
This week, the county health department advised residents to stay home as much as possible and limit contact outside their families to no more than six people per week, each for 15 minutes or less. The recommendations have been largely ignored.
Tamalee St. James Robinson, the county’s interim health official, said in an interview that she had the power to make such measures mandatory, but more rules would be unnecessary because authorities refused to enforce those already in place. square.
County prosecutor Travis Ahner said he was focusing on crime and saw no point in cracking down on companies for mask violations.
Tamalee St. James Robinson, acting public health official for Flathead County, has refused to impose restrictions on coronaviruses.
(Richard Read / Los Angeles Times)
For their part, county commissioners this month released a statement supporting “the Montanan’s constitutional rights to make personal protection choices for themselves.”
“Where does that leave me, just me over there?” Robinson asked.
As for the county health board, Bukacek prevailed in the latest battle over whether to limit social gatherings.
“Statistically, for practical purposes, COVID in Montana is 100% survival,” she said last week in an online public council meeting.
“No, this is not the case!” shouted Dr Jeffrey Tjaden, a local infectious disease specialist who showed up to warn that without immediate action things were likely to get worse.
A minute later, he interrupted her again to tell her that he was so fed up with his presentation that he logged out.
“I’m not saying the people who died didn’t matter,” she said after she left.
At the end of the night, council members were left with just one proposal: no gatherings of more than 500 people.
They rejected it with a 5-3 vote.
This drew criticism from the governor, who said he was disappointed that the council ignored the experts and that “some are trying to politicize this virus” over the protection of health and safety.
“The message has been delivered loud and clear that if the spread of the virus is not controlled in the Flathead area, schools will have to close, parents will be short of manpower, businesses will be hurt and the hospital will run out of beds, ”Bullock told reporters.
This week, he announced that state investigators had carried out spot checks on more than a dozen businesses in Flathead County and that authorities would ask a judge to temporarily close five establishments deemed “flagrant violators” for flouting mask requirements and social distancing standards.
The greatest impending threat could be winter, as the virus spreads more easily when people are indoors.
In Whitefish, temperatures plunged on Friday when the first big snowstorm of the season hit.
“Now is the time to act, and unfortunately it’s up to us,” Qunell told his colleagues at this week’s city council meeting.
The city manager suggested writing a letter to the board of health to encourage it to take action. A city councilor said another letter to businesses could persuade them to cooperate.
Qunell didn’t see the point.
“The county will do nothing no matter what letters we write,” he said.
He wanted the council to vote to close bars before 10 p.m. – before they are usually crowded and noisy – and limit restaurants to 25% of capacity.
But the only thing the council decided was to meet again on Monday to consider setting limits over Halloween weekend, when Whitefish traditionally hosts a downtown pub crawl.
In an interview, Qunell said Whitefish must strike a balance between protecting citizens and the economy that has eluded national, state and county leaders.
“There has been a failure of leadership at the highest level,” he said. “The responsibility continues to be pushed down, and that ended in our towers.”
