Dr. Dave Higgins, a pediatrician at Billings Clinic, also recognized the difficulty of following the guidelines.
“These things that are being asked, they’re hard,” he said. “Each person may have a harder time doing some of these things than others. And, we’re tired of doing this. We’re fatigued. But they’re so critical at this time.”
Higgins stressed the goal of this advice to social distance, mask up and more is to keep life going, not to shut it down.
“We want to keep kids in school, to keep people at work,” he said. “We want people to have the freedom to do all those things safely. To get there, we hope people will rally around this shared common goal.”
For those in the community who may not realize the severity of the surge, Higgins implored them to listen to the stories of people whose lives have been “torn apart and affected by COVID-19.”
“Those stories are out there,” he said. “But unfortunately, if people haven’t experienced it in their own circles, it may not seem real. But, with enough time, unfortunately, sadly, they’re going to. We don’t want to see that.”
The letter is at least the second of its kind since the COVID-19 pandemic took off in Montana in March. On March 24, leaders of Billings Clinic and St. Vincent Healthcare’s emergency departments penned an open letter to the community asking that the public stay home to stem the spread of the virus.