TORRINGTON – Ezdan Fluckiger, M.D., is experiencing the pandemic in two roles: A small business owner working to keep his doors open and an emergency room doctor witnessing the worst of COVID-19 patients’ ailments. This is Fluckiger’s “balancing act.”
Every day for the past nine months, the owner of the Bread Doctor, a Main Street bakery open Thursday through Saturday, has balanced the physical and financial health of his employees and his business.
Up until Nov. 17, it was a balance Fluckiger could maintain, that was until members of his bakery staff tested positive for COVID-19 and he announced he would close the bakery doors.
“It was not good for us financially to be closed over Thanksgiving, but for me, that can’t be the deciding factor,” he said. “The deciding factor has to be let’s do what’s right for health.”
He decided to close the bakery, which amounted to two weekends out of commission. The Bread Doctor was closed until Thanksgiving Day, so they had to cancel and refund customers for pie and roll orders, according to a post on their Facebook page. But for Fluckiger, closing the bakery was the right thing to do.
Fluckiger’s business was one of the first to take COVID-19 related precautions in the second week of March when the virus was not yet detected in Goshen County but continued to spread throughout cities and towns elsewhere in the country.
“We instituted social distancing basically just before the governor ordered it because I could see what’s coming here,” Fluckiger said. “We want our employees and customers to understand that we think [social distancing] helps us.”
Fluckiger’s employees also wore masks consistently, before Goshen County Health Officer Marion Smith, M.D. requested a county-wide mask mandate issued by State Health Officer Alexia Harrist on Nov. 18, requiring those inside of or in line to enter a commercial business wear face coverings among other measures. Smith recently extended the mandate through Jan. 8, with the addition of individuals 12 years old and older among the parties required to wear masks in public or commercial buildings.
The mandate is controversial in Goshen County – some residents see it as a useful and necessary measure to prevent the spread of the virus and others see it as an overstep by the government into constituents’ personal decisions.
Enforcement is difficult, according to Torrington Police Chief Matt Johnson, who said in November that limited law enforcement resources make a targeted enforcement plan difficult.
Goshen County Attorney Eric Boyer said enforcement will be left up to local law enforcement, with the goal of “keeping the public peace.”
The mask mandate states businesses must post notices stating that face coverings are required. Signs of different colors are now visible on each door up and down Main Street, but beyond that, enforcement is not uniform.
Lisa Miller, Goshen County Economic Development (GCED) CEO, said GCED and the Chamber of Commerce “take no stance on the ordinances/mandates as that is the responsibility of the health department.”
GCED donated their Tuesday morning radio time to health officials, she said, so they could disseminate information regarding COVID-19 best practices.
Still, Miller said she and her team are focused on commerce.
The mask mandate created some fears for Torrington’s businesses, according to Miller.
“This is their busiest time of the year,” she said. “[Business owners] were very concerned, because they were getting information from people saying, ‘I’m not coming to the store if I have to wear a mask.’ This was nothing [business owners] decided, so they were getting some of the backlash and they were concerned about it hurting their business.”
Based on conversations with local business owners, Miller said, it’s clear their businesses are struggling from the decline in tourism this summer. Thankfully, Goshen County residents are shopping local, as indicated by revenue generated from the quarter-cent sales tax that includes tax generated from both local and online sales.
Home on the Range, a Main Street boutique owned by Republican State Senator Cheri Steinmetz, indicated to customers via a post on their Facebook page do not need to wear face coverings to enter the establishment.
They said employees posted the signs that say patrons are required to wear face coverings to enter, but they won’t actually enforce it.
“Our place of business and our employees are not funded by the government and will not be the ‘mask police’ for the State of Wyoming,” the Nov. 19 Facebook post says.
According to the county health order, Goshen County businesses’ obligations are to post mask mandate notices and ensure employees wear face coverings when within six feet of one another or when they are in a space where they’re interacting with the public.
Across the street, Fluckiger’s bakery encourages customers to wear masks, with the required signage and a statue of a baker wearing a holiday-themed face-covering sitting in the window.
Regardless of the policies and actions of his fellow business owners, Fluckiger continues to follow public health COVID-19 recommendations – social distancing, face coverings and hand washing – and ask that his employees do so, too.
“By taking care of people, I get a different sense of how common [the virus] is,” he said. “In the beginning, it wasn’t as common in our community, because we’re so isolated. But as time has gone on, more people have been infected. Working in the emergency room just gives me a sense of the reality of how serious the disease can be.”
