The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all, including it would seem, the Pierce County Public Health Officer AZ Snyder. The lawful powers granted to Wisconsin public health officials are outlined beginning in Chapter 250 of the state statutes, but Snyder has more than just an administratively based interest in the novel coronavirus. Along with directing the fight against it, she’s survived it. Snyder tells her story in the most recent online testimonial released under the “Let’s Do Our Part, River Falls” health initiative. So what’s it like being on both sides?

“I woke up New Year’s Day 2020 to an alert on my phone of an emerging infection that had been identified incoming out of Wuhan, China,” Snyder shares in her testimonial. “I thought, ‘oh boy, here we go again with SARS,’ but I would have never imagined the global nature of the pandemic that we’re experiencing right now,” she said. That wasn’t the biggest impact on Snyder, though.

“What impacts me the most is when I call a phone number to talk to a case and their spouse tells me that their husband or their wife is in the hospital. They’re terrified that their spouse isn’t going to make it,” she says, going on. “The grief and fear that you experience is really—it’s really impactful.”

Relating how a local assisted-living facility had a large outbreak recently, Snyder said she had been able to go and provide some technical assistance. “In the COVID wing, it feels really desperate,” she says. “There are never enough staff to care for these patients, and the patients, they also get lonely…People don’t realize how devastating this can be.” As an example, Snyder shared of one facility where the infection rate reached 50 percent in a two-week period.

“And this facility had been doing everything right,” she went on, saying there should be no stigma attached to testing positive for COVID-19. I myself tested positive, and I’m the local health officer,” she said, including wearing a mask, socially distancing and not going to large gatherings. “I did everything right,” she said, saying that it went to show that with disease levels where they were getting COVID was likely even with protocols in place. That wasn’t a reason for fatalism and defeatist thought though.

“People still need to do everything they can to avoid getting COVID-19, and it’s not about you,” Snyder said of Pierce County and the surrounding area. “It’s about all the people you are going to be around in the days that you are potentially infectious.” Relating that she was relatively young and healthy, Snyder said that COVID was still not good.

“Young and healthy people may not die frequently of COVID, but it is not fun either,” she said. “My plans for this year were totally different,” she added.

“I think that public health staff are their friends, their neighbors, and their relatives,” Snyder said, referencing the perception of ‘that mean public health lady’ before giving examples of how she and her husband were active in the community. “We aren’t here to control everybody. We are here to use every tool we have to protect the community. That’s what Public Health is…we want you to succeed because your success is our success,” she closes out her segment. With a doctor, public health nurse, fourth grade teacher and non-profit consultant still to come, links to local COVID-19 testimonials can be accessed by going to www.rfcity.org/letsdoourpart.