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Editorial: Let’s come together as a community to push ourselves forward during COVID

Craig Press Editorial Board:
Sheli Steele, Craig Press General Manager
Joshua Carney, Craig Press Editor
Kandee Dilldine, community member
Randy Looper, community member

The news that Moffat County isn’t quite ready to move into the “Protect Our Neighbors” phase shouldn’t come as a surprise to residents, considering COVID-19 cases are on a steady rise in the county. Dating back to June 25 Moffat County has doubled its number of positive cases. That’s just 22 days.

While that news is undoubtedly disappointing, it should spur some change for us locally; positive change. This isn’t meant to be “us against them.” This is us working together for the betterment of our community. We, as Moffat County residents, can do better to protect ourselves.

Protecting ourselves locally means doing all that we can to ensure cases don’t continue to pop up within the county, whether that’s wearing a mask, washing your hands, or social distancing. We need to get past the point of discussion, debate, ridicule…whatever you want to call it…from both sides when it comes to this pandemic we’re dealing with. We need to eliminate our prejudices either for or against our friends and neighbors who wear or don’t wear masks. Be kind to each other.



We cannot afford as a community to take a step backwards in this fight against the novel coronavirus. While we may be rural and remote our cases still matter, the safety of our community matters and certainly influences case count across the state. With the increase in summer travel, even a small number of cases can make a large impact as we enjoy our summer by camping, hiking, gathering, etc.

If we don’t want to go back to the dark days of the Stay at Home orders, we as a community need to start working together to push towards meeting the criteria to move into the “Protect Our Neighbors” phase, which puts most of the decision making on local government. We can’t get there unless cases stop climbing. It’s on us to work together as one, Craig Strong.



We understand some of our readers view the pandemic as a hoax in an election year, while others take this very seriously and are following the rules and regulations put in place.

Our health is at stake, and so is our economy. We’re all in this together, and we need to act like it, starting now. If not, we risk going backwards, potentially being forced to stay at home. That would lead to local businesses closing up shop for good, forcing current residents to look outside Moffat County and Colorado for work. It could be devastating to the economy. Even if you don’t like being told what to do, would you consider wearing the mask so that local businesses can keep their doors open and come out at the end of this with wide open doors?

Don’t take your frustrations out on the store clerks or servers or workers when they require you to wear a mask, they are just doing their job.  Don’t kill the messenger.

If and when this is all over and nothing happened, well isn’t that exactly what we want?

Let’s do our part, work together and truly come together like this community has shown in the past to work towards a common goal: complete reopening and no restrictions sometime in the future. It’s up to us.


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