On March 10, 2020, the first COVID-19 cases were announced in South Dakota.
A couple of days later, the Argus Leader closed its newsroom and employees started working from home. Many haven't returned.
As reporters, we've seen the pandemic from two sides. We're talking daily with public health and state officials about the latest responses, and we've written obituaries about people who have died.
But we've also lived COVID-19. A few employees have gotten very sick from the virus. Others haven't seen their families in nearly a year. A couple wouldn't be working in Sioux Falls if it wasn't for the pandemic.
Here are our stories:
There's no way to sum up the last year
My oxygen levels were fine. The two days of rapid heartbeat and potential dehydration in January from not being able to taste anything and pure exhaustionalmost made doctors sendto me to get more emergent care for COVID-19.
It probably was not the smartest idea, but we decided to wait it out, partially for the fear of being separated from my husband and daughter in a way that couldn’t be thoroughly predicted and partially to keep fighting the fight at home and not take up hospital services for those truly in need.
We weren't sure how things would turn there for a bit.
Out of all of three of us, we tried to protect our higher risk 2-year-old the most. Previous respiratory issues before her immune system developed left her health a question mark.We didn’t think when the disease finally hit thatI would be the one to get struck the hardest. My husband was mostly asymptomatic. Having one dose of the vaccine beforehand may have helped.
My toddler? Thankfully, she was the continuous ball of energy we couldn’t keep up with those two weeks.
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There’s no way for me to sum up the impact this pandemic has had on my life during the last year, or what those long-lasting impressions may be yet.
The numbers, though—they speak for themselves.
- 347 - The amount of days since I stepped into my own newsroom for more than a 10-minute drop-in to grab notebooks and gear.
- 20 – Roughly the amount of Sioux Falls school board meetings I covered virtually as a precaution during the last year. Also, the number of months it’s been since I’ve been able to see my sister and parents in Texas, both of whom have underlying medical issues and are older than 60. One of whom became confused by who family was when COVID eventually made them sick.
- 12 - The number of family and friends in my immediate circle who had the disease, including my husband and most likely my toddler. Doctors assumed she had it, if we had it.
- Four - The number of times I was in quarantine either directed by work policy or self-placed for being a close contact. With a daughter who was high risk, we tried our best to take every precaution possible, but to no avail.
- Four – The weeks it’s been since my family was cleared from the state health department after having COVID-19, but also the time I still haven’t been able to smell most things and still get easily winded by simple tasks.
- Three - The number of people I know who were hospitalized with it.
- Two - The number of COVID tests I took before I was also positive, and the number of weeks my child’s daycare closed for direct exposure with the illness inside the facility.
- One - The amount of people I knew directly who died from COVID-19.
-- Shelly Conlon
COVID-19 brought me to South Dakota
How has the pandemic affected me? Well, that’s easy. I’m here, ain't I?
Jokes aside, coronavirus came with some good and bad for me. And trust me, being here is part of the good.
My first experience with COVID-19 was in early December 2019 working as an editor for my local news station in Louisiana. With nothing else going on I’d throw in packages, or news stories, about some weird little virus that was popping up in China to the shows.
The day Louisiana had its first confirmed case I was sitting in a bar with my professor. He asked me how job hunting was going and I said 'good.'
A week later, school, gyms and restaurants were closed. My internship was canceled, too. All but one of my scheduled interviews were dropped. That interview ended with a job offer that was rescinded a day later. Then for the next month and a half I applied everywhere. I heard nothing.
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I watched my name scroll across the living room TV in mid-May, that was my graduation.
Fast-forward to late August, and after two weeks unemployed, I begin talking to the Argus Leader. Minutes before my first interview, I went on YouTube to see how to pronounce Sioux Falls.
A month later, I left everything and drove into town. It’s cold here, but I like it. Not what I planned, but I can’t complain.I’ve had it better than most of my graduating class.
-- Alfonzo Galvan
Good news comes to those who wait
Going into the year, I was fresh out of college and unsure of my next steps. I had tried to make some headway for jobs before I graduated in December, but nothing seemed to pan out.
At the beginning of the year, I was working part-time at the San Francisco Giants spring training facility in Scottsdale, Arizona in the team shop. It was a big blow to my confidence levels, working part-time after getting a college degree.
February, I accepted a job in Texas, but before I started the job, it got delayed two weeks due to the pandemic. Shortly after that, the offer was rescinded and I was back to square one.What followed was six months of unemployment and video games and binge-watchingall 23Marvelmovies.
It seemed to be a refreshing change of pace after a consistent pace of work and school, but it quickly turned to a lack of motivation and depression. I know I wasn’t the only one feeling that way, but it still did nothing to ease my mind.
At the end of the year, I got a job with the Argus Leader and made the journey north to Sioux Falls. Looking back at the challenges of the year, it all led me to where I am now and for that, I am grateful despite it all.
-- Stephen Perez
Counting my blessings
The conversations in my work environment changed from overhearing one colleague pointedly question a powerful official, to my roommate yelling at her cat to stop pooping in her shower.
It’s one of the more lighthearted changes to 2020: the quirks that come with working from home. We’ve all said, “You’re still on mute,” or waved to a pet that popped into Zoom calls (or, in my case, you’d have seen my roommate’s cat waving her tail in front of the camera as she used my keyboard as a chair or my face as a boxing bag).
I spent months writing about this never-not-changing pandemic from a small table in the corner of my living room in my 900-square-foot southern Sioux Falls apartment. My roommate’s sister came and stayed with us for a few months when California’s economy came to a halt. We made the best of our pandemic-induced situation: them without work, and me with almost too much to do. We had movie nights, ate popcorn dinners, ordered too many matching outfits online and frolicked outside while we could.
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I wrote about outbreaks in correctional facilities, how families were terrified about what would happen if the virus got to them or someone they loved. I had friends who were worried they couldn’t pay rent. We shared stories about people we lost to this new illness.
But it all truly hit me when the virus was in my own living room.
One day, my roommate, and one of my dearest friends, got a fever and had a terrible cough. I got a terrible feeling.
COVID-19 wiped her out for five weeks. A healthy 26-year-old woman who was active, ate healthy and was careful.
She’d text me to let me know when she was going to the kitchen. We’d sanitize between each of our visits. More than four months later, most things still don’t taste good to her and she can hardly smell anything (something she says comes in handy when it’s time to clean the litter box).
I’d spent months writing its effects and symptoms, but I had been fortunate to not have ever felt sick or have multiple family members fall extremely ill or die from the virus. But seeing it in the flesh gave me a new appreciation for its tenacity.
Something I learned through this pandemic: people are important, and I am one lucky woman. I wouldn’t have made it through if it weren’t for my roommate(s), my man, my friends, my coworkers and my family.
-- Danielle Ferguson
Significant moments get stuck ina screen
In January 2020, my first nephew was born in Wisconsin. I held him that day, but I haven't touched him since. My sister's family was cautious of the virus around their newborn, and for much of the pandemic I avoided interstate travel.
Video calls let me witness my nephew’s growth over the past year. One week ago, he recognized me as a real person on my sister’s phone for the first time and waved to me as he babbled happily. I nearly cried.
In August, I got engaged. The proposal took place at Palisades State Park with two friends along as part-diversion, part-recording crew. Sending a video was the closest thing we had to celebrating with family.
I’ve been planning the wedding with my bridesmaids through FaceTime as well, even to find my dress. I haven’t seen most of my loved ones in over a year, and I still probably won’t see them in person until the wedding day when COVID-19 is less of a threat.
Last month, my fiancé, Carter, lost his broadcasting job with Sioux Falls Canaries baseball team. The pandemic put such a financial strain on the team that they decided to eliminate a professional broadcast to save money. He lost the job over the phone, and the interview process for new seasonal opportunities is likewise a steady supply of phone and video calls.
At least the pandemic has already given Carter marketable experience broadcasting remotely. He called multiple USD women’s basketball games for the radio via live stream in our own living room to avoid unnecessary away game travel.
There are times during this pandemic where life feels like it only happens through a screen. I have to remind myself to be grateful for these forms of connection, even when it gets frustrating, because without them it would be much more lonely.
--- Erin Bormett
College ended sooner than expected
I was on a spring break trip to Boston the first time I knew COVID-19 wasn’t just a buzzword.
Sitting on the kitchen floor of an Airbnb and a few drinks in, I broke the news for my college newspaper that, because of a virus that was slowly spreading across the U.S., spring break would be extended one week so professors could start planning for online courses — that is, if COVID-19 hitSouth Dakota.
And then I never stepped foot in a classroom again.
It was my senior year at Augustana University. Within just a few weeks of that kitchen floor news, I was fully transitioned to online courses, working with a college newspaper staff to figure out how to continue campus reporting without a physical space and knee deep in a 30-page thesis due in under a month.
At the same time, pressure from the university meant that I had to move out of my college dorm. Lacking the mental space or reliable internet needed to work from my family’s farm, I moved into a friend’s three-season porch, where I lived for the next three months until I could find more stable housing.
Graduating in a pandemic wasn’t the bookend I wanted for college. Instead, it was a pre-recorded video, a Coors Lite and a decision to move on despite the circ*mstances.
Since then, I’ll admit I’ve been lucky. I found full-time employment in journalism, a house that I share with two dear roommates and even adopted the cutest of bunnies last fall (his name is TJ).
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Life after college was never going to be easy, and having to do it all from home didn’t make it easier. But, with vaccines in distribution and continued social distancing, I have high hopes for this summer. But, who knows?
-Rebekah Tuchscherer
Pandemic made depression even worse
There are a lot of days I struggle to get out of bed.
It was about two months into the pandemic, when I was supposed to be with my family in San Diego, celebrating my youngest brother’s wedding day.
I was going to be the officiant. I was going to get to see my grandparents.
All of that was obviously postponed. California had already basically shut down, and even South Dakota was still being cautious with the coronavirus. Plus I was on furlough, and was already at a low point with my normal struggles with depression.
Staying exactly where I was, in bed, where I could do no harm and no harm would be done to me, felt like the best option.
But I had made plans for a round of golf with two of my best friends. Golf was one of the few socially-distant activities that felt safe where I could still see friends, get the extrovert’s recharge and try to feel “normal.”
I typed out cancellation texts on my phone twice that morning, but I didn’t send them. I waited until the last minute to leave the house, too embarrassed not to.
I forgot my golf shoes.
And I had the best time that day. Good friends, fresh air and beers can do that.
Even so, as I drove home that afternoon, I just cried and cried.
That was 10 months ago now. The amount of loss that has stacked up since then is immeasurable. Personally and collectively.
None of this past year was normal or good. Hope is on the horizon, and with one vaccine shot down, my brother’s wedding rescheduled for May, my grandparents still with us. … Iam still struggling to get through it all.
But I know it won’t happen without each of us reaching out and taking care of each other.
-- Cory Myers
Pandemic proved to be breaking point for my anxiety
COVID-19 sucks.
I contracted COVID-19 working in my previous newsroom on Election Night. It was a night I didn't want to spend alone, after spending months working from home, so I decided to work in the office.
I regret that.
The details of my illness are too traumatizing to fully recall. I won't say too much, but I had every symptom.I remember not wanting to fall asleep because I feared I would stop breathing in the middle of the night.
I'd known other people who had COVID-19: my best friend, people I knew from USD, extended family members. I feared the worst for us all, but we (miraculously, technically)recovered.
I continued to work from home through my COVID-19 illness because I knew I'd be bored without working, and would feel guilty for not pitching in.
After speaking with a source for a story about how she had a case of COVID-19 far worse than mine, my anxiety grew much stronger.
On the last day of my quarantine, I woke up feeling like I couldn't breathe. I had to go to the urgent care in Rapid City, where the caring staff at Monument Health told me I was having a COVID-19-related panic attack.
They gave me a lorazepam tablet -- a sedative that acts as a very strong anti-anxiety medication --and ran every imaginable test on me: EKG, blood tests, X-rays, even a urine test (God knows why).
At the end of my four-hour-long stay, one very kind nurse asked if I thought I have anxiety. It went something like this:
My doctor: Ah yes, you have anxiety. What do you do for work?
Me: I'm a reporter
Doctor: OK, and what has made you feel anxious lately
Me: The news
COVID-19, both my illness and the pandemic at-large, exacerbated my mental health. It's clear I suffer from both depression and anxiety. I'm now on anti-anxiety medication and am happy to be back home surrounded by my supportive family at a tough time like this.
It's worth the reminder: don't slack off on your health. Mental health is a part of your physical health, too. Mental health IS health.
Dear reader, when you get a chance to take the vaccine, take it. You don't want to go through what I went through.
--- Morgan Matzen
How to even describe 2020?
When I got in a car crash in mid-February of 2020, I remember thinking that at least the rest of the year could only improve from there.
Hindsight, as they say, is … well, let’s not finish that phrase.
What do you even say about the last year, other than that it feels like it lasted about a week and also somehow my entire life?
The biggest thing, I guess, is how lucky I feel.
Lucky that I’ve only had to worry about when my parents will get the vaccine and not if I’ll need to FaceTime them in the hospital.
Lucky that my conversations with my therapist have been focused on how to deal with working from home and not how to grapple with the grief of losing a loved one.
Lucky that the few scares me and my partner have had all ended in a negative test for COVID-19, instead of weeks, if not months, of recovery.
But that hasn’t stopped a base level of stress and anxiety around it all from permeating my everyday life for the past year now — something that positive news around vaccines has only caused to slightly subside.
And I’m doing my best to channel what’s left of those feelings into my work — because even as the virus itself (hopefully) becomes less of a concern, the effects of COVID-19 are going to be felt in Sioux Falls for a long, long time.
--- Trevor Mitchell
The day sporting events and life changed
I was working on my story after the Summit League women's championship game at the Denny last March when news broke that the coronavirus had claimed its first life. About an hour later, the South Dakota High School Activities Association sent out an email letting everyone know that it was monitoring the COVID-19 situation, but planned to proceed with the Class B girls state tournament in Spearfish as scheduled (at least for the time being).
Both notifications should have hit a little bit harder than they did, but in the fog of basketball (Summit League championship game then a SoDak 16 doubleheader at the Sanford Pentagon), I didn't have time to process any of it.
The story continues below.
But as the night progressed, the signs became even more prominent.
Following Dell Rapids' win over Vermillion in the final state qualifier of the evening, Pentagon officials began sanitizing the stands and benches. Later that night, Matt Zimmerfloated out the very real possibility that the NCAA Tournament could be canceled due to the pandemic.
I thought he was full of it.
I would never have predicted that this virus would have impacted my life and my career in such a profound manner.
Beyond the mass cancellations last spring, it's changed how I do my job. Interviews with college athletes and coaches are done virtually now, be it on Zoom or over the phone, while attendance restrictions and safety protocols have changed the experience covering high school events.
It's taken some getting used to, but with a vaccine being rolled out, there's at least some hope on the horizon.
Last weekend's Class AA girls state basketball tournament was the closest thing to a normal sporting event I've covered since that fateful Tuesday in March 2020 with a raucous (but limited) crowd and a big-game atmosphere for each game. It was a welcome reminder of how things used to be and brought into perspective some of those little things (like fans in the stands) that I'd been taking for granted.
I'm ready to get back to normal.
--- Brian Haenchen
A year after first case in state, COVID-19 finally hit our household
With four kids in public school and an in-home daycare that brings parents and children in our living room every day, I figured it was only a matter of time before COVID-19 landed in our household.
We were very careful at the start of the pandemic. We wore masks everywhere and avoided public places as much as possible. We were forced to cancel our summer vacation to Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. We stayed home.
In November, my youngest son, Ethan, had a fever at school and I had to go pick him up. Because of school policy, he couldn't go back to school unless he had a negative test. A few days later, his test results came back. He was positive.
We figured this was it. There was no way COVID-19 wasn't going to hit everyone in our house now. You try making a 7-year-old kid stay in his room for two weeks.
But nobody else in our household got it. We were spared.
Cut to March, almost a year to the date the first COVID-19 case was announced in South Dakota, and my 14-year-old son Ian was asleep on our couch. He had a fever.
A few hours later, I started getting body aches and a fever. My 10-year-old daughter said she wasn't feeling well.
We loaded up the minivan on Sunday and all got the swabs in our nose. Less than a day later, it was confirmed. We were all positive. My wife tested positive the next day.
As bad as some people have had COVID-19, I feel fortunate. Other than a lot of fatigue and a lot of time spent in bed, we seemed to have avoided the worst of it. Our daycare was closed for two weeks. Already used to working at home, I stayed home and turned the Zoom video off during conference calls so nobody could see my perpetual bedhead.
Neighbors, friends and coworkers pitched in to help keep our fridge supplied and food delivered.
Above all, we feel a sense of relief. The uncertainty of what would happen if we got it and trying to avoid it is gone. For the most part, we can move on knowing that we are close to getting our vaccines.
We have a family vacation planned in June to Florida and are hoping to have a normal summer.
That word: Normal. It's never sounded better.
-- Michael Klinski
World in shutdown led to increased anxiety
Like many of you,I have ridden a mental, physical and emotional rollercoaster throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
When it first arrived in South Dakota, just as the Summit League tournament was ending, I didn’t think much of it. Having just spent four full days in a mostly-packed PremierCenter, I remember thinking I had probably already contracted the virus. The idea didn’t much worry me.
But as the world went into shutdown mode – bars and restaurants closed, sports canceled, everyone sent home to work – a new way of life set in. Suddenly I was washing my hands every hour and using my shirt sleeve to open doors. For a while there, grocery store runs were stressful. Would they have hamburger meat? Toilet paper? The liquor store received a shameful amount of my money. I missed my family tremendously. I got fat.
It’s strange to look back on, especially when I admit to myself that I was probably more careful in the early days, before infections had truly spiked, than I was this fall when things got really bad. Virus fatigue has been a constant struggle. As the end nears, I remind myself to stay vigilant. We've almost made it. I can't wait to have our old lives back.
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I think it’s sad that our attitudes toward the virus haverun along political lines. I myself am fairly moderate in that arena, so it probably makes sense that I’ve gone back and forth in my reactions to COVID-19. I wear a mask in public. With very few exceptions, I’ve done no socializing in the last year. My family canceled Thanksgiving and had a splintered Christmas. I often suspect I’m being overly cautious. I wonder if we’ve given up more than necessary for this pandemic.
But then I remember. Almost 2,000 South Dakotans are dead. More than half a million Americans. Countless more will deal with the effects of the virus for the rest of their lives. Whenever I think about 2020 or the COVID-19 pandemic, now and for the rest of my life, it’s not the canceled basketball tournaments or missed family gatherings or trips to the movie theater I’ll think about.
It’ll be the people who probably had the same reaction I did when they first heard of the coronavirus. The ones who thought it would come and go just like the bird flu, SARS, and all the other ones, but who, unlike me, aren’t here to tell you they were wrong.
- Matt Zimmer
Soccer provided important social contact
Would they come? That was the question I had when Dakota Alliance Soccer Club resumed training in the beginning of June.
In the more than a decade that I’ve coached, I’ve never had so much uncertainty before a training session. The kids in my group – boys born in 2006 – knew going into the session that they would be assigned a cone, spaced out from teammates. They knew that they would only be working on technical, ball mastery skills. Technical work is important, but also boring. Under normal circ*mstances, technical work is rewarded with games. But there would be no games to start. No contact with teammates.
I also wondered if there were parents too freaked out about coronavirus to let their boys train.
As our training time neared, car after car delivered players. By the time we got under way, we had a full squad of nearly 40. It was clear they had yearned for something to do, some kind of in-person social activity, even if distanced.
Technical training continued for a couple weeks. The club gradually introduced contact. Then full scrimmages by July. In August we played in our first tournament. In November, we moved indoors at the Sanford Fieldhouse, where we’ve trained twice a week.Our spring campaign started last month with a tournament in Kansas City.
Even with all the video gaming kids have access to these days, it’s been clear to me that they need social time and physical competition. Their mental health is better for it. I’m proud of Dakota Alliance and the South Dakota Youth Soccer Association for providing the framework for safe competition. In some places, kids haven’t been in school a year, and they aren't allowed to playsports. I just shake my head.
-- Jonathan Ellis
Trying new things and holding ontonormal
When the world began cancelling everything, I was angry. A half-dozen concert tickets in hand for the spring and summer were useless, a cross-country trip with my family became infeasible with all of the planned stops along the way no longer offering any entertainment and ambitions ofa year filled with gatherings, impromptu excursions and simple strolls through downtown shopswere dashed.
Stopping life from happening in hopes of keeping a virus from spreading seemed like a futile overreaction to me and the people in my household. But we had no choice but to play along.
So we made the most of it, findingnew ways to spend time with friends and family and relishing the activities and traditions we were able to keep throughout the pandemic.
After schools closed in the spring and working remotely was thrust upon a journalist who relies on being where the story is, I became a stay-at-home dad who doubled as a teacher. At first, the thought of being solely responsible for the well-being of my child's education was overwhelming. But then I gained the calming perspective that schooling outside of the home is still a relatively new concept in the grand scheme of human civilization.
We made it through the spring with success (I'll admit, we've probably gone a little too heavy on government and American history lessons and a little light on math),and when summer ended with no real movement toward normalcy – masks and plexiglass were still everywhere – we decided to give home education a go for another year.
Beyond education, finding outlets for our kids was paramount and outdoor fire-pit sessions became the norm at our house. We roasted more marshmallows than I care to tally. And during the day, when time allowed, I began putting together a full-scale tree house for my daughter and her friends to play in.
Anything but a carpenter, I was in over my head. But with YouTube videos and a pandemic at my disposal, I knew I could figure it out. And once it was finished, I ran a ziplinefrom it just for a good measure.
Amidst it all, I still managed to find my pre-pandemic self from time to time. Harley rides with friends, trailriding on my dirt bike and even attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, albeit much more briefly than usual, reminded me that no matter what, there will always be a need for fresh air, cold beer and comradery.
Until we ride again…
-- Joe Sneve
