Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXI): Not a single case yet in Modoc County, California

Entering Modoc County, July 2018
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

Julia Prodis Sulek reports for the San Jose Mercury News under the headline, "This one California county has zero coronavirus cases. What’s its secret?"  The subhead is "Remote Modoc County, nuzzled next to Nevada and Oregon, is so far COVD-19 free."  Here's an atmospheric excerpt:

Taqueria in Alturas, 

This high desert county of alfalfa fields, wildlife refuges and 9,000 people has not recorded a single case of COVID-19. Not even one. Ever.

It’s the only county in California that appears to be coronavirus free — one of only five in seven Western states that can still make that claim, at the moment.

The story quotes Modoc County spokesperson Heather Hadwig: 

We’re all shocked we don’t have it yet. We know it’s coming. We thought it was coming for weeks. Mostly, though, we’re ready and very, very prepared.

One of California's most rural counties, Modoc initially complied with statewide orders but more recently has declined to do so.  Indeed, Modoc County officials were among the earliest to defy Governor Newsom's shelter in place directives, and they re-opened without state permission in early May.  The Modoc County Sheriff, Tex Dowdy, has said he will not enforce state orders on mask wearing.  The story quotes Dowdy:

I’m getting paid to come to work every day. For me to tell them that they can’t and further burden them with writing them a citation or fining them when they’re already hurting? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for any community.

Modoc Livestock Yard
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

Sulek explains that there wasn't a lot to shut down when the governor's order was issued in March:

When the lockdown orders were put in place, there really wasn’t much to lock down. With years of drought hurting farmers and online shopping killing retail, towns in Modoc County have been struggling for years. In the county seat of Alturas, home to 2,600 people, half the businesses on Main Street — about 30 — were out of business before the pandemic.

As for other factors, Sulek notes the low population density and precautions Modoc County officials are taking:

[N]ot many live in cramped quarters. Most people here work for the government managing federal lands that make up a large portion of the county. The county screens and quarantines migrant farmworkers and seasonal firefighters when they first arrive.

And then there is Modoc's role as a

Even the influx of “coronavirus refugees” who fled their urban confines in L.A. and San Francisco to camp along the Pit River and sling back beers at the Round Up Saloon haven’t carried COVID with them. 

And here's a great line that juxtaposes what BLM means in cities and what it means in the rural western United States:

In these remote reaches, BLM still stands for Bureau of Land Management. But that doesn’t mean the Black Lives Matter movement hasn’t shown up.

For more on Black Lives Matter in rural America, read this. 

West of Alturas, Modoc County, July 2018  (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 

Earlier posts about Modoc County are here, here, here, and here.   Prior posts here and here mention Modoc County in relation to the pandemic. 

Another great recent story out of rural northern California is by Capital Public Radio's Rural Reporting Project, "'It’s A Way Of Life': Rural California Towns Deal With Loss Of Income, Identity As Coronavirus Cancels Summer Events."  The dateline is Taylorsville, population 150, in Plumas County, population 20,000, in the northern Sierra.  The featured festival that got canceled there due to coronavirus:  The Silver Buckle Rodeo.  Plumas County is south of Modoc County, separated by Lassen County.