As Arizona was reaching the highest COVID-19 death rate in the nation over the weekend, the state GOP held a largely maskless gathering inside the same Phoenix megachurch where now former President Trump held a superspreader rally in June.
“THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP,” read a big sign still in a front window at Dream City Church as the generally barefaced GOP faithful filed inside on Saturday.
The speakers included U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs and U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar. Both had been videotaped refusing to wear a mask in a secure location where they and other representatives were escorted during the storming of the Capitol building. Three of the fellow members of Congress sheltering with them subsequently tested positive.
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But the big event at Saturday’s annual gathering was the re-election of Dr. Kelli Ward as Arizona Republican Party chairwoman. She had been endorsed by Trump in the wake of his defeat.
“The world is my oyster,” she said on hearing the news.
Ward returned the favor as the assemblage she led censured former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain. They had committed the heresy of endorsing Joe Biden for president.
The state GOP also censured Gov. Doug Ducey, who had declined to challenge the state’s certified results in the presidential vote. His other sin was to have issued emergency orders for a limited lockdown as the virus spiked. He joined the list of heretics even though he had exempted political events such as Saturday’s from the 50-person limit on public gatherings. He had not been able to save himself by refusing to order a statewide mask mandate.
Never mind that all of Arizona’s major hospital systems and medical organizations had repeatedly entreated Ducey to issue a mask order. The one physician who could have made the mandate happen—and was likely a factor in it not happening—was Ward.
The wife and daughter of physicians, Ward worked some years back as an emergency room physician at Havasu Regional Medical Center, one of the Arizona hospitals that ran out of ICU beds during the surge in December.
Mayor Cal Sheehy of the surrounding town of Lake Havasu—where Ward resides along with her husband and physician mother—had imposed a mask mandate in July, but he lifted it at the end of August. He refused to reinstate it even as the virus began to surge during the holidays.
“At this time there is no intention to have an additional mask proclamation,” he said in early December. “But again, we need our citizens to be vigilant as we go through this and best practices suggest wearing a mask.”
By the experience of a 30-year nurse who has worked at Lake Havasu Regional Medical Center and two other area hospitals, at least half the people in town ignore best practices and go about barefaced. Kayla Stutler told The Daily Beast that a majority of the population is “very, very Republican.” She described the general solution regarding mitigation there as “ridiculous run amok.”
“There’s a lot of, ‘You, you can’t take my rights away from me’ kind of feel to it,” Stutler told The Daily Beast. “‘You can’t tell me to wear a mask in a store. You’re violating my constitutional rights.’ There’s a lot of that ‘Freedom... America’ kind of sentiment.”
And Lake Havasu is definitely Ward, as well as Trump, country.
“There are a lot of people that support her during her big time in the city,” Stutler said.
In recent months, Stutler has worked as a hospice nurse with the spirit of a true health-care worker, in her words, “making their last moments on Earth as comfortable as I can.”
She has also been in her final year of earning a doctorate in nursing and raising four kids, aged 8, 7, 5 and 3. She has asthma and that gave her added cause to be grateful when she got a first COVID-19 vaccine dose on Dec. 27.
But two days later, she fell ill and tested positive.
“I was super mad because I’d almost made it through all of 2020,” she said.
She experienced shortness of breath and joint pain and muscle pain and extreme fatigue.
“It was a pretty tough couple of weeks,” she said.
Her husband also tested positive, having most likely unknowingly brought the virus home from work. The couple quarantined themselves in their bedroom, hoping to prevent the kids from catching it. The kids subsisted on a stash of Lunchables and other child-friendly foods that did not require cooking.
“They kind of had free rein to create their own kingdom in the house,” Stutler said. “They were doing pretty good.”
But then the inevitable happened.
“One would say, “I have a headache,’’ she recalled. “Another would say, ‘I don’t feel very good.’”
All four tested positive on New Year’s Day, but thankfully they were soon on the mend. And Stutler’s husband suffered only relatively mild symptoms.
She wasn't so lucky. She tweeted a report of her condition on the first day of a New Year that the whole country had hoped would be much better than the last.
“Covid Day 4: Breathing is hard work and I'm exhausted. Walking from the kitchen to bed feels like running a mile. Taste & smell are barely there. Pain is just life now. Life is miserable.”
As a nurse, she knew that a pain in her calf or sudden trouble breathing could be danger signs.
“Every little thing worries me that I'm going to be a case that suddenly turns south without warning,” she tweeted.
Difficulty breathing twice sent her to an emergency room.
“The total bill? $15,389.41 and $4,528.53 (different hospitals),” she tweeted. “Thankful for extremely good health insurance I get through school but imagine if I didn’t.”
But with coffee and moxie she was able to keep up her studies. She aced a test on Jan. 11.
“Somehow managed to pull off a nearly perfect score on my physical health assessment test,” she tweeted. “Missed one freaking thing and a perfect score by 10pts. This is my weird ‘gifted kid’ super power.”
She was continuing to struggle with the virus on Jan. 19.
“I would like to report a crime,” she tweeted. “I was struck by a large bus, then trampled by a stampede of wildebeest and finally beaten by a gang of angry mobsters who thought I owed them money. Or at least that's the only logical conclusion for why I feel so shitty today.”
By this week, Stutler was feeling better. But a phone call early Tuesday morning brought the tragic news that the father of a close friend since her early years had died of COVID. The friend’s husband had also caught the virus at work. The friend then caught it, as had her parents.
At least the mother was said to be OK. But the friend has serious blood clotting problems that will require long-term medication.
“She’s 32, on blood thinners we usually see 80- and 90-year-olds on,” Stutler said.
Stutler herself continues on the mend. The kids are fine, though the 7-year-old sometimes needs to sit down after she has been chasing her siblings.
“Oh, I have to, I can’t breathe,” the girl says.
Meanwhile, the friend’s father will be added as one more to the previous tally of 496 COVID fatalities in surrounding Mohave County.
“It’s like Russian roulette,” Stutler said.
The difference is that in this particular version, the likes of Dr. Kelli Ward and all those who go about without masks direct the danger at others as well as themselves.
Call it Arizonian roulette.
