West Texas News

With 22 million Americans and counting who have lost their jobs during the coronavirus outbreak, a 73-year old bookshop owner in Fort Scott, Kansas is refusing to shut down her shop until someone makes her.

Roxine Poznich, who used to work in a lab in a hospital for many years, told The Herald-Mail she isn't too worried about COVID-19. She said she relies on the money she makes from the bookstore for her grocery money, and says she won't close unless she is ordered to do so.

“If they shut me down, they shut me down,” she said.

Poznich also told the news agency her town's lack of a hospital would exacerbate pandemic conditions in the town.

“I think it will make a big difference,” she told the news agency. “It just depends on how hard it hits our county.”

The Herald-Mail reported that while many cities nationwide are shutting down and bracing for impact from the number of COVID-19 infections that have occurred, rural cities and towns aren't as worried or think the threat is being blown out of proportion. As of April 18, the United States has reported 39,014 coronavirus deaths, though 26,711 of those have been in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Sharon Hupp, a 77-year-old who lives in Arcadia, Florida, said she at first wasn't worried about the virus, but that quickly changed.

“I tried to downplay it, too, until everything around me started closing,” Hupp told the news agency. “Look at Disney, spring training and Broadway. That’s when I thought ‘OK, this must be real.’"

Rodney Williams, a Motley County, Texas volunteer fire chief told the news agency that neither the city nor the county had made an emergency declaration yet and he doubted it would happen. Williams told the news agency the county hadn't been affected aside from people coming into the county to buy toilet paper.

In addition to 60 Texas counties that have not reported any cases of COVID-19, Motley County is one of 77 counties in Texas to have one to five confirmed cases of the virus.

Washington County, Kansas, Emergency Management Coordinator Randy Hubbard told the news agency he worries about his county because there are only two hospitals that service approximately a dozen towns and unincorporated areas, along with three nursing homes. There are also zero ventilators. 

“If we had a big outbreak we would probably be scrambling because they are smaller hospitals,” Hubbard told the news agency.