Page 57 - My FlipBook 1

THE SMALL-TOWN LEADER
JUDITH NISSULA
MAYOR
Cascade, Idaho
1,000: The town’s population
“IDAHO’S YEAR-ROUND PLAYGROUND”: The town’s tagline

Early on, we had people driv- half ago, we had an earthquake. bly know who that is, and I’ll it does. But we can’t do that. We
ing up from Boise and Meridian 6.5 magnitude. City Hall suf- probably know a lot more. can’t just stop people.
to buy toilet paper. That caused fered damage. As I’ve looked at the faces of I hope people come out of
a lot of friction. People were We are a very small city staff: the city employees and the peo- this thinking, when they buy toi-
upset. I’m sure that not one one part-time and six full-time ple around town, the thought let paper, Who else am I impact-
of the out-of-towners was wor- employees. We have a ten-bed has crossed my mind. Conceiv- ing here?
ried about whether someone hospital. It won’t take much to ably, they could not be here as —As told to Justin Kirkland
else might have needed the overwhelm our town. a result of this virus. And what
toilet paper. My worry, as a citizen and as the can I do? What can the city do?
People are like, “Oh, it’ll never mayor of Cascade, is if we have Some people wonder why we
Shortly before the pandemic, happen here.” Well, who’d have anybody pass away as a result can’t just roadblock the state
Nissula applied for Cascade thought we’d have an earth-
to appear on a new HGTV show of the coronavirus. I will proba- highway coming into town. They
called Home Town Takeover. quake? And then, a week and a get wrapped up into wanting
The premise: to renovate the city to have more power than
an entire community in need.

“IT WASN’T CLEAR THAT THIS WOULD
BECOME A PANDEMIC. PEOPLE WHO SAY

THAT—THAT’S REVISIONIST THINKING.”

THE ONE WHO
CALLED IT
HELEN BRANSWELL
INFECTIOUS-DISEASES REPORTER, STAT it might take time for it to adapt to efficiently
Boston infect people. The thinking would be that if you
DECEMBER 31: Date she first publicly mentioned saw something early enough—and it looked
the virus, on Twitter like the Chinese had seen it pretty early—that
HER TWEET: “Hopefully this is nothing out
you might be able to get a handle on it if you
of the ordinary. But a @ProMED_mail posting
about ‘unexplained pneumonias’ in China got rid of the source.
is giving me #SARS flashbacks.” LATER, IT BECAME apparent that by the time
41: Number of COVID-19 stories she’d written by people thought this thing had zero problem
the time Trump declared a national emergency,
moving from animals to humans, it was already
on March 13
a human pathogen.
IT WASN’T IMMEDIATELY clear that this
I WROTE A STORY today about Ebola. It’s was going to be a pandemic. People who say
the first time since January 7 that I’ve written that—that’s revisionist thinking.
about anything that wasn’t COVID-related, if YOU MIGHT SAY, “Well, everybody should
that gives you any indication. have been focused on being ready.” Before
I USED TO BE based in Toronto, and I cov- then, probably. I do think people moved
ered the SARS outbreak there, in 2003. Even too slowly. I also think there was some
now, I can remember the points at which things denial involved.
happened in that outbreak. To the date. IT BECAME CLEAR when China locked down
WITH THIS ONE, I struggle to remember if Wuhan [on January 23]. They were effectively
While on a walk one evening in April, Branswell
photographed the figures that make up the something happened in like January or Feb- crippling their economy. Nobody does that if
Boston Women’s Memorial, which includes this you can avoid it.
sculpture of Lucy Stone, a nineteenth-century ruary; it just all seems like one long month. It’s
suffragist and abolitionist. “They were all wearing been a bit of a blur. Time has melted. —As told to Dave Holmes
masks,” Branswell tweeted. “Which is more than I
can say for a lot of the Bostonians.” AT THE BEGINNING of the emergence of a
new disease, there’s good reason to think that

57 SUMMER 2020