A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19 , 2022
I feel bad that I’m mad at him,
because he’s g one. And I’m mad at
myself for not making him go” get
vaccinated.
Before his death, Danny, as
president of the Lewiston 50 Plus
Club, led a community center
with several hundred members
that hosts regular activities: eu-
chre, bingo, exercise classes.
Janice, the self-proclaimed
first lady, volunteers regularly at
the club and works for the local
commission on aging, preparing
Meals on Wheels deliveries and
food served at the facility. She got
vaccinated to protect herself —
and to shield the older, vulnerable
residents she encounters.
“If I get sick and one of our
people dies because of me... I
can’t live with that,” she said.
She regarded vaccination as
just another layer of protection at
the club, where they implement-
ed a mask-wearing policy, tem-
perature checks, regular sanitiz-
ing and a contact-tracing opera-
tion, creating one of the few
s paces in the deeply red county
where seniors could visit know-
ing their health was a priority.
For the most part, it worked.
There have not been any out-
breaks at the club since it re-
opened. Even this fall when the
virus spread through their circle
of friends, Janice never contract-
ed it. But in the end, in an area
where the severity of the virus has
been played down, her efforts to
protect Lewiston’s most vulner-
able residents stopped short at
being able to protect the most
important person in her life.
People “think God is going to
create a miracle for everybody,
and [he’s] not. God helps those
who help themselves. The vaccine
was provided for us to help our-
selves,” Janice said. Her husband
“chose not to get that vaccine. It i s
what it is.
“Nothing I can do about it now.”‘Tired of crying’
It was a snowy afternoon be-
fore Christmas, and just inside
the entrance of the club, a small
kitchen crew prepared dinner.
Staff and guests wore masks as
they entered the building. In a
backroom with dark wood panel-
ing and an electronic bingo board
on the wall, two men and two
women sat around a table, each
holding five cards as they played
euchre.
While that table was full, more
than a half-dozen tables aroundlung function, his kidneys were
failing, and then he had a heart
attack followed by a stroke that
left him blind.
“I’m angry with him. Of course,
I’m angry with him. This didn’t
have to happen,” Janice said. “A ndin the emergency room before a
bed in an intensive care unit
opened up an hour and a half
away in Traverse City.
During the next two weeks, his
condition worsened day by day.
He experienced a dramatic loss inthan 200 miles north of Detroit.
The friends got sick first. Danny
tested positive a few days later.
Within days, his oxygen
plunged dangerously, and he was
taken to a small rural hospital
where he waited nearly two daysthem sat empty. Along with bingo
night, the twice-a-week afternoon
euchre sessions are typically
among the most well-attended
activities at the Lewiston 50 Plus
Club.
Members say attendance start-
ed to dwindle as a brutal and
deadly fall wave of the coronavi-
rus burned its way through Mich-
igan, killing people in rural places
such as Lewiston and surround-
ing Montmorency County at
twice the rate of residents in more
populous corners of the state.
“People get cautious really
quick. It’s a senior group,” Long,
the club’s v ice president, said. “It’s
socially changed the way we think
to do anything, especially once we
were shut down for the year...
and you are afraid to go out to the
gas station or the grocery store.”
Things got worse once Danny
Burtch got sick. They briefly put
activities on hold to prevent fur-
ther spread. In-person meals re-
sumed with just a few tables fill-
ing up every day. But with Janice
staying in Traverse City while
Danny was hospitalized, bingo
was canceled.
In t he days after Danny’s death,
news about the omicron variant’s
rapid spread caused additional
fear at the club.
As they played euchre and ate
Christmas cookies, Gogo ex-
pressed concern about the vari-
ant and news reports chronicling
the rush for testing.
“I can’t believe all these lines
that they’re showing,” said Gogo,
who has been terrified of crowds
throughout the pandemic and
continues to avoid large gather-
ings. Like others, she worries that
the spread of the virus could re-
sult in renewed restrictions that
would shutter the club.
Gogo and many other club
members mostly stayed home
during the pandemic’s first year.
They used masks when they left
the house and kept away from
loved ones. It upended their so-
cial lives: The club closed because
of state and local restrictions,
making an already isolated part
of Michigan feel even more for-
lorn.
“When it went up to as much as
250,000 [cases] I thought that
was the worst thing, that was the
scariest thing. And when it went
up to a million, I mean, there was
no help anymore, you just [took]
care of yourself and you [knew] a
lot of people are going to die,” she
recalled. “It was a scary time.”
They thought the vaccines
would bring the pandemic, and
their constant worry, to an end.
More than 75 percent of Mont-
morency residents older than 50
are vaccinated, compared with
just 33 percent younger than 50.
But the way anti-vaccine rhetoric
has taken hold, especially in
p laces such as Lewiston, has
meant the virus continues to rav-
age the community and keep peo-
ple on edge, afraid for their
health, fearing they could lose the
ability to socialize.
“Now that we play cards twice a
week, I don’t k now what I’m going
to do if we [don’t] play cards,”
Gogo said.
“Too many people are resist-
ing,” she said. “I’d think they’d be
afraid of dying.”
As winter deepens, death con-
tinues to be a constant compan-
ion for the older residents in
Lewiston. And for Janice, it con-
tinues to bring a sense of purpose
after her husband’s death, wheth-
er it is encouraging holdouts to
get vaccinated or offering succor
to others who are grieving.
Just after the holidays, a man
walked into the club for the first
time with four friends to pick up
the menu for the month. He
looked about Janice’s age and as
she talked with him, he told her
his wife had died of covid-19 a
month before Danny. She offered
condolences and assured him the
club would be there for anything
he needed.
“I do have my moments, days,
etcetera, that I just want to curl
up and cry my heart out. I’m tired
of crying, and I don’t want to
anymore, but I can’t seem to stop
it,” Janice said. “But when I help
others, my heart doesn’t hurt for
those few minutes.”
Since Danny got sick, Janice
has been checking the county
health department’s c ovid-19 data
at least once a day. One Sunday,
when she opened the page, she
saw the death toll had risen to 42.
After seeing the update, she
saved the image and shared it on
Facebook alongside a photo of her
husband. She added a note: “If
anyone knows this persons family
let them know I am so sorry for
their loss. Sending them hugs and
prayers.”
[email protected]“It seems unfathomable,” said
Randy Long, 67, the club’s vice
president and a local radio host,
clad in a Santa hat, his cards
facedown in front of him. “I’ve
spent almost eight years with this
guy... and for him to just be
gone, taken away in less than four
weeks by a virus, getting your
head wrapped around that.”
As health-care leaders pleaded
with Michigan residents to take
the virus seriously and to get
vaccinated, Burtch was among
several thousand mostly unvacci-
nated people who flooded the
state’s hospital wards during the
fall and early winter. For weeks,
Michigan led the country in
covid-19 deaths, and the 71-year-
old retired electrician, with no
major health complications be-
fore contracting the virus, was
among them.
Two years into the pandemic,
the story of Danny Burtch is the
story of incalculable loss and of
hard choices: whether to be vacci-
nated, whether to leave the isola-
tion of home for fellowship,
whether to partake in a beloved
game of cards.
“It’s just as scary a thing as you
ever lived through,” said Betty
Gogo, 83, who figures she is “just
about the oldest person in town”
but maintained a bustling social
life before the pandemic, filled
with lunches and bowling.
Anger and heartbreak
On a recent Saturday morning
outside Munson Medical Center
in Traverse City, Mich., Janice
Burtch sat in a car holding a can of
Diet Coke in one hand, a pack of
Marlboros in the other. Snow was
falling, the blacktop was wet, and
she had just watched her husband
of 29 years take his last breath.
“I literally watched that man
die in front of my eyes,” Janice
said, recalling the moment, just as
the sun was rising, when she held
the hand of her husband inside a
hospital room surrounded by
health-care workers.
Unlike Janice, who was fully
vaccinated and boosted, Danny
had refused to get the shot, some-
thing his wife attributes to a long-
standing distrust in government
and a heavy diet of Fox News.
A week before Thanksgiving,
Danny, Janice and two of their
closest friends — both unvacci-
nated — gathered for an evening
of cards in Lewiston, a one-stop-
light town surrounded by state
forests and inland lakes more
VIRUS FROM A
In area where severity of virus is played down, loss and hard choices play out
PHOTOS BY NICK KING FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Euchre players, f rom left, Patty Garrett, R andy Long, Kent Balogh and Betty Gogo play the card game at the
Lewiston 50 Plus Club in northern Michigan on Dec. 28. Janice Burtch displays a f avorite photo of her husband, Danny, who was the
club’s president a nd died of covid-19 late last year. Burtch prays before dinner at the club, which has been a h aven for some.America has become the most powerful and prosperous nation in the history of mankind because of the engines of democracy
and free enterprise. Democracy empowers all of the people in the nation to exercise self determination and contribute to the vital
functioning of the nation through voluntary associations, school boards, participating in local governance, starting and owning
businesses adding to the growth and prosperity of the nation. Autocracy takes all that away. Autocratic nations are run by a single
individual, his family and cronies. Where individual enterprise conflicts with their appetites, it is repressed. Edicts restrict ownership
and operation of businesses The economic engine of the nation falls into a small group of people such as the oligarchs of Russia..
Then once great nations fall to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder. Only a fool would throw what democracy and free
enterprise has provided us in America Away. And only a fool or a foolish party would let them. The arguments of senators Sinema
and Manchin can no longer be given credibility. Sinema argues that taking away the filibuster would remove the protection of
the democratic party would have in the minority against the excesses of the Republican Party. That argument lacks all credibility
because everyone knows - and it has been demonstrated by the former majority leader himself - that whenever it’s in the interest
of his party he will throw the filibuster away anyway. He did that already in order to shove a Trump nominee on to the Supreme
Court. Her argument fails because she is defending nothing and because the filibuster will become the immediately expendable
if republicans take power. Manchin argues what he knows isn’t true: that he supports the change to the filibuster and the voting
rights act only if republicans buy into it. He knows republicans are in lockstep. Even the bill that he wrote himself garnered no
support from republicans. He argues falsely that important legislation has to have the support of the minority party. Important
laws have passed through Congress with only the vote of the elected majority party such as civil rights and redistricting laws passed
on the vote of the elected majority party alone in the 1820s, 1842, the 15th amendment to the in 1868, 1993 and Affordable Care
Act in 2010 and the lifesaving American rescue act plan last year. His argument fails because it’s false on its face. These arguments
are so weak and so obviously wrong, they are an insult in the historical moment. If they had an honorable credible argument, they
would’ve made them by now. The president and the democratic leadership are fools if they allow 2 senators to make up fabricated
excuses to cover the real reasons why they are sabotaging their own party, 81,000,000 Americans who voted for that party, the
majority of American people and the power and prosperity provided over 250 years of American democracy. Traditional symbolic
gestures that from democrats will not be accepted.What additionally becomes a threat in such a capitulation to 2 r ogue senators is that it makes The argument pushed by Autocratic
nations: that democracy is too weak to meet the needs of the people. In the 1930s They pointed to the Weimar Republic where
the German people were starving because of the great depression and the Versailles treaty of WWI. The argument was convincing
because the leaders of the Weimar Republic were in fact weak and cared far too much for procedure and deliberating while the
people were starving. Those of us who lived in the 20th century know that whenever there were crises in America, the leaders
were quick to address them and exercise the full weight and power of the presidency to do so. FDR took over the nation when 1/
Americans were out of work, & their families were starving and exercised the broadest assertion of presidential power in order to
put those people back to work, get the bank’s working again to put money into the economy and get food to the people. He didn’t
constrict the power of the Presidency by pre censoring his initiatives. Some of his initiatives were knocked down but by 1935 over
half of Americans were working again, feeding their family’s and in 1936 he was reelected in a landslide. When members of his own
party tried to become obstacles he conducted fireside chats with America and he had personal chats with them where they came
to Jesus. JFK was famous for jawboning the most powerful people in America and LBJ could get their cooperation with a phone
call. There were calls for Autocracy during FDR’s 3 administrations but his ability to meet the needs of the people with whatever
exercise of power necessary including extreme arm twisting caused the racist and divisive propaganda of John Coghlan, Huey
Long, the Trump of his time, and Al Smith to fall by the wayside. It is these 2 senators who are pointing a dagger at the throat of
democracy. President Biden needs to remember the words of Teddy Roosevelt: speak softly and carry a big stick.ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENTwho believes that LBJ, FDR, & JFK couldn’t get 2 votesfrom their own party for a vote to save democracy?United Progressives[email protected] • [email protected]S0114 2X.Washington Post newsletters deliver more. washingtonpost.com/newslettersSPO TS?