ALL THE DETAILS … Williams County COVID Defense Team Coordinator, Mr. Bill Martin, talks COVID with the Williams County Mayors Association on February 17th. (PHOTO BY TIM KAYS, STAFF)
By: Tim Kays
The last thing that Bill Martin saw coming down the pike in 2020 was a major pandemic, and himself spearheading a local pandemic response team.
Things didn’t exactly work the way that Martin, the President of Spangler Candy Company, planned last year, but as he told the audience at the Williams County Mayors Association meeting at the Drop Tine Winery in Montpelier on February 17, the COVID-19 virus rearranged everyone’s plans, creating the need for the formation of the Williams County COVID Defense Team.
Martin, who also wears the hat of Williams County COVID Defense Team Coordinator, said that the history of the local COVID Defense Team has, throughout the duration of the pandemic, been an ongoing learning experience.
“Even as late as middle of November,” he recalled, “I had no idea that I would be thrust into sort of the frontlines of the COVID pandemic in my own county. We were battling it at Spangler, as you can imagine with 400 employees, three shifts coming in all the time.”
“We were doing different things there, but (Williams County Health Commissioner) Jim Watkins reached out and said, ‘Hey, the Governor has an interesting idea. I want to talk to you about Governor DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Husted.’
‘Back in March when the pandemic first hit, I think we could probably have a three-hour long debate about things that the Governor did right, and the things that the Governor may have done wrong.”
“But as we got through that first wave of the pandemic and we got into this fall, I think they realized we need to do something different when this second wave hits.”
“And so they came up with this idea of forming COVID defense teams in all 88 counties of Ohio. I have no idea how many they actually did, but I know that was their concept.”
“The idea was to take business and community leaders,” Martin continued, “…and have them get the word out about what’s the best way to combat this pandemic.”
“What we learned as business leaders as I reached out to peers at companies like Ohio Art, Daavlin, Tru-Fast, Bard and a few others, is that we were taking all the necessary precautions in our businesses every day.”
“We were requiring folks to wear masks. We were keeping people distant, at least six feet. We had to make some major changes. We added a lot of Plexiglas barriers in our factories, and we were requiring more sanitation and washing of hands.”
“And what we were learning is that the virus wasn’t spreading inside our businesses; people from the community were getting the virus, and they were coming into our place of work.”
“But as we were quarantining people, and believe me, we had roughly 25 to 30 people test positive for the virus just at Spangler, and we had roughly 50 people go on quarantine.”
“But those that went on quarantine weren’t getting sick; whatever we were doing in our factories, it was working.”
“Even though we did quarantine people, they weren’t coming down with the virus, so it made us think, ‘Hey, maybe these there’s something to these safety protocols, and if we want to stop this virus from spreading, we’re going to have to follow these things in our personal lives.’ We’re going to have to wear masks when we go into retail.”
“We’re going to have to keep our distance when we’re standing in line at the bank. As much as we don’t like them, and believe me I don’t like him either, as much as we don’t like them, they happen to work.”
“And so we adopted that…as our message: Follow these safety protocols, we can stop the virus from spreading. And the idea was to ask our good residents of Williams County to take this serious, that we can get through this.”
“All we’ve got to do is follow these safety protocols, and we can get through this and come out the other side.”
“The governor wasn’t going to do anymore stay at home orders. That came pretty clear to me when we met with him in November. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t going to put in a curfew and do some other things that you could argue about, but he wasn’t going to do the stay at home thing like he did in the spring.”
“We put together this COVID Defense Team,” Martin continued with his history. “We typically meet once a week virtually, and we talk about what’s happening in the county, relative to COVID.”
“Believe me, after talking about it all day at work and hearing about it on the news and radio, it’s always the last thing you want to talk about.”
“So as business leaders we said, ‘Okay, they need to hear from us,’ and we did a variety of things. We created videos. There were about 20 of them from just regular people in Williams County, and I think we had most areas represented.”
“And we kind of came up with this thing – Who you wearing your mask for? Who are you trying to protect? I was trying to protect my 85-year-old father-in-law from Edgerton.”
“He works on a dairy farm to this day. He’s out there working every day, but he was nervous about this virus because he wasn’t ready to go. He’s 85 years old; he wasn’t ready to go!”
“Why should he be ready to go? He didn’t want to get sick. So…who are you trying to protect from getting this virus? That was kind of the message, and we had some really great videos.”
“We got thousands of views that were on the Williams County Health Department website, and their Facebook page. Thousands of views, but very few comments, and I thought, ‘Why is that?’”
“And I remembered, this is like the most political issue in Williams County because of the presidential election, and all the things going on around COVID. What not to do, and what to do.”
Looking at the current COVID status, Martin said, “I’ve got some really good news to report,” he said. “Clear back in July of 2020 was really when it was at its lowest at about 43 cases per 100,000 residents. It was very low in the summer. People are outside.”
“It felt like the virus wasn’t really here yet. It was on the national news every night. New York was going through terrible issues, but in Williams County, it wasn’t really here in a big way. But as soon as we started to go inside in the fall, look what happened. ”
“A tremendous spike, beginning really about the middle of October, the end of October, as we got into Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving holidays, the Christmas holidays, we saw tremendous spikes.”
“People were indoors. People were socializing over the holidays, as you would expect. And we saw coming from that spike…December 17 was our highest; 1,038 cases per 100,000 residents. We hit our spike, and right about that time, we saw the deaths begin to increase.”
“I think in that timeframe, from maybe middle December to the middle of January, we had 65 people pass away in our county from COVID, all within a three or four week period.”
Martin went on to say that Williams County is on the upswing. “As time is going on,” he said, “…we saw some significant declines. And as we stand here, as of last week, we’ve had about an 80% reduction in our cases per 100,000.”
“We’re down to about 212, down from the peak of 1,038. At the top of our peak, we were 12th in the State of Ohio 12 out of 88 counties.”
“By the time we brought it down here just a week ago, we were like at fourth. So we went from being in the top 12, to being 84th out of 88 counties.
I’ve got to hand it to the Williams County people. There’s a lot of factors that drove this, but you’ve got to hand it to our Williams County people who I think once they saw this is for real – people are dying. I’ve got to protect my fellow Williams County residents – they started following the safety protocols.”
“We just have to hand it to the Williams County folks. We’re doing it. I went through some of these reasons, but now…our team feels like we need to make a little bit of a tactical change in our focus.”
“We were heading into a long, dark winter, and it’s certainly delivered on that…and it’s not done. We started to feel like, from a mental health perspective, we were getting a lot of information that this was just going on way longer than anybody expected it to.”
“There are a lot of mental health concerns in our community. A lot of folks struggling with this, knowing we’re in winter, hunkered down. So we had to come up with a way to generate some fun, and so we came up with this concept of a Williams County High Five.”
Printed on an 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper, the High Five to Thrive is a simple black and white rendering of a hand. The concept is to give that plain hand an artistic treatment of your own design, then present it to someone with an uplifting message.
“I hope by now you’ve seen it around town a little bit,” Martin said. “Maybe you haven’t seen it so much in the outlying communities, which is why I’m here tonight, to kind of give you a feel for what it what it is.”
“It’s really about just recognizing someone for doing something. Something great, something unexpected; give them a high five. It’s just a simple thing, and it’s free; it doesn’t cost you any money.”
Martin then revealed that the COVID Defense Team is continuing on the offensive with a new motivational effort called, ‘Brew and Chew’. “Brew and Chew,” he said; “I just liked the name. (Montpelier Mayor) Steve (Yagelski) here a few weeks ago did his very own Brew and Chew at the Drop Tine Winery.”
“It was kind of a little bit of a pilot that he wanted to test, and it turns out it went really well. So Amy Miller with the Bryan Area Foundation, she’s got plans to roll the same kind of thing in at a few restaurants in Bryan. It’s just a matter of doing a live virtual Zoom event at a restaurant.”
“And, you know, we would be partaking of whatever the restaurant might provide, and invite people to come down…and realize you can do this safely. My wife said the other day, ‘Compared to my cousin who lives in Florida, we’ve been able to go about our lives sort of normally.’
‘Yeah, we have to wear a mask, but you’ve been going to work every day. We’re all doing the safety protocols, and it’s the same with going to restaurants like we are here tonight. I mean, you can do these things safely. And we have to help our restaurants get through to the other side.”
Mayor Yagelski said, “One of the reasons I opted to do the pilot up here is talking to Corey (Humbarger), the owner, if I could have permission to do it.”
“He said, ‘Yes, because I want people to know, the protocol we’re doing here…the big fear that we’re hearing from the group is people are afraid to go to a local restaurant because they don’t think they’re following the protocol.”
“So that’s the whole idea by doing a virtual Brew and Chew. You can get the owner online, say this is what I’m doing, and by doing it virtually, turn your computer around to see the social distancing. See what they’re doing…wiping things down, and the workers are wearing masks.”
“It is trying to get people to feel comfortable,” Martin added. “We’re still here. We still have a business to run. You know, I think I saw some data, and”
“I can’t remember which state it was but they determined that like 74% of the COVID spread happens in personal homes between folks…and only 1% happens in restaurants. So why do we shut them all down? It just doesn’t even make any sense. 1%…I mean, that’s a pretty low risk.”
“So we want to help them get to the other side, and we think Brew and Chew will help them do that. Amy’s working on that with a few in Bryan, and I’d like to see us do some other parts of Williams County and get that going.”
Tim can be reached at tim@thevillagereporter.com