San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
In El Paso, only heartbreak equal to COVID
EL PASO — There are moments when this town of almost 700,000 looks likes a sleepy mountain village, especially at dawn, when the pinks and lavenders start to smudge the eastern horizon.
Appearances are deceiving. COVID-19 is killing this town. The city, as an entity, will survive, but as the plague continues, El Pasoans are dying at an alarming rate.
Medical experts call the city the “epicenter” of the novel coronavirus in America. The numbers tell a story of heartbreak and anguish — a tale that is ongoing, every day assaulting us with fresh horrors. More than 800 people have died since April, and COVID-19-related hospitalizations have jumped almost 300 percent, according to local health officials.
Hospitals and medical centers are being stretched to the breaking point. They are treating more than 1,000 patients, with almost one-third of those in intensive care units. These are not just statistics; they are our friends, our neighbors, our loved ones.
Almost everyone knows someone who has contracted the disease. We see some of them every day, on local and national TV networks, their hope — and often their lives — seeping out of them. The tragedy assaults us, in our dens and living rooms, and no matter where we turn — TV, radio, the internet — the forecast is the same: dark and gloomy.
Funeral homes, their refrigerators full, have ordered mobile morgues. They are parked outside the homes, lined up like rigs at a truck stop, death on wheels.
The town has become a combat zone, with an enemy that is unseen and uncaring.
It is easy, for El Pasoans, to personify this virus, assign it traits that are human — or inhuman. It is cruel, malicious, virulent. It is our enemy.
Bonnie Najera knows. Six of her family members have died from the virus. She was on “Good Morning America” the other day, reciting the name of each loved one, a litany of heartbreak she could barely get through, her lips trembling with every name she uttered.
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego ordered a two-week shutdown of all essential services last month, but the move showed an appalling lack of coordination among local leaders. Mayor Dee Margo declared his opposition to the move almost immediately, and a state appeals court overturned the decision two weeks later, a ruling that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated on Twitter. He called the judge a “tyrant who thinks he can ignore state law.”
“We follow the guidelines — wearing masks, social distancing,” Shannon Kanorr, an IT professional, said. “But you see groups gathering in the parks, dozens and dozens, without masks. You have to be smart about things.”
Kanorr and his wife, Alma, have altered their lifestyles since the first death was reported in El Paso on April 9.
“Our two sons are not coming for Thanksgiving,” Alma said. “And I am driving to Austin to bring our daughter here for the holiday. She has been in quarantine for two weeks, and she has been tested.”
Alma and her mother, 91, used to attend Mass every Sunday morning at St. Paul Church in the
Lower Valley.
“Just yesterday I found out that three parishioners had COVID,” she said. “Two have passed away this weekend. The other one is in the hospital, fighting for his life. The church stopped holding services, so the last time I saw them was about a month ago, with masks. These were people I knew, and it hit me hard.”
Jessica Ontiveros, a secondgrade teacher at Mesita Elementary, tested positive for the virus on Nov. 5, and her first thoughts were about her two children — Alexa, 13, and Aden, 10. Alexa tested positive a few days later. Aden tested negative.
Ontiveros is a single mother, and all her relatives work, so the three have been self-isolating in their three-bedroom apartment. They remain in their rooms, captives of the virus, trying to stay safe. Relatives drop off food for them on the front steps of their apartment.
“I had a fever, and I had a rough cough, so my GP called an ambulance,” Ontiveros said. “But the paramedics told me they didn’t want to take me in because they were at 100 percent capacity, and I would have to be waiting for hours, which might be worse than staying home. I’m taking medicine to manage it, and I’m feeling better now. But it was scary.”
The best hope, for El Pasoans and the world, may be a vaccine, which U.S. health officials say may be ready for mass distribution by the spring.
“I feel neither despair nor hope,” Kanorr said. “I take things one day at a time. There is no concept of time anymore. We are in survival mode.”