Conflict over COVID risk involves county official, wife and chat at Nebraska poolside
A Nebraska woman claims Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell and his wife, Leah, may have exposed her to COVID-19, but the Howells and the county health director say the risk is minimal, if it exists at all.
The complaint arose from a chance encounter that the Howells had with the woman and her family at a hotel poolside in Valentine, Neb., during the Howell’s long weekend anniversary trip to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and the Badlands.
The woman said Leah Howell sat in a chair next to her on the pool deck and after they’d talked for a while, told her that she and Jim Howell had attended a meeting last week where another attendee had later tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Howells confirmed the encounter, but said they had continued their trip only after Sedgwick County Health Director Adrienne Byrne told them there was no cause for alarm.
“Adrienne said we do not have a need or reason to be quarantined or be tested even, for that matter,” Jim Howell said. “She said we should enjoy ourselves on our trip. So that’s what we’re doing.”
The Nebraska woman, who asked not to be named to protect the medical privacy of family members, is not buying that explanation.
“I’ve been exposed and my family’s been exposed and this elected official you have down there just doesn’t give a damn,” she said. “He’s left a lot of people in bad situations. I’ve had to go home and quarantine because I’ve been in contact with somebody who’s been in contact with COVID 19.”
The woman said her husband — who wasn’t with the family on the visit to Valentine — has severe diabetes and other immunity issues that put him at high risk of serious complications or even death if he gets COVID-19.
“The worst part is I have a spouse at home who is health-challenged, so I’ve had to hire somebody to come in and take care of my husband while I quarantine at the opposite end of my house,” she said.
Leah Howell said she struck up a conversation with the woman because she noticed the family was a mix of white and African-American members.
Leah Howell has an African-American adopted sister and two nieces and a nephew who are African-American.
“I know sometimes you feel like people are kind of looking at you funny and so I went out of my way to be friendly to them because I’ve been in their shoes,” she said.
She said it was a friendly conversation initially, but things went sideways when conversation turned to COVID-19.
“She was interestingly enough, very anti, very distrustful of the whole idea of the COVID virus and expressed disdain for being tested and in fact had told me she postponed her surgery . . . to avoid getting a COVID test and she thought it was a big over-reaction,” Leah Howell said.
“She asked me directly: ‘Have you even met somebody who had COVID?’ And I, like an idiot, said well, actually, we were at a meeting a couple of days ago where someone had it,” Leah Howell said. “I was trying to encourage her that it is a real thing and we do need to be careful.”
She said the woman’s attitude on COVID-19 has flipped completely.
“Now she’s acting like she’s very concerned about it, when she was extremely dismissive and skeptical about the whole thing,” she said.
Both Howells said they never told the woman their names, but Leah Howell did tell her that they were from the Wichita area and her husband was an elected official.
The woman tracked down the Howells’ names and called Byrne to complain, she said.
Byrne confirmed she talked to the woman on Friday.
Byrne also confirmed that she’d green-lighted the Howells’ trip.
“I spoke with commissioner Howell when he and his wife were getting ready to leave Sedgwick County,” Byrne said. “He wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be considered a close contact because of being in someone’s home (with a COVID-infected person) where there was a meeting taking place, I believe, and they were nowhere near the person.”
She added: “In order to be considered a close contact, you have to be within six feet for more than 10 minutes.”
Leah Howell said “We were in the room with that person, but it was a very big room and Jim and I never talked to that person or got close to that person.”
Byrne said if either of the Howells had been in a close-contact situation, they would have been contacted by a Health Department investigator as part of contact tracing, but that didn’t happen.
“It must have been someone who called him from the party,” she said.
The Howells said they planned the trip six weeks ago to celebrate their 30th anniversary.
“We can’t go to Branson for example and see a show,” Jim Howell said. “That’s an impossibility right now. So we decided to do outdoor things.”
He said they were nearing the Nebraska border and called Byrne immediately when they got word they’d been at the meeting with someone who has COVID-19.
“We were willing to turn around and come back,” he said. “But Director Byrne said . . . we didn’t have any reason to be concerned.”
Jim Howell was scheduled along with the other commissioners to be tested at a media event last Wednesday to demonstrate the county’s drive-through testing capability, but their regular commission meeting ran long so it was postponed for a week.
He said that turned out to be a good thing because their meeting that included the COVID-infected person took place Tuesday and it’s doubtful enough time would have passed for him to show a positive test even if he had caught the virus there.
He said they were on their way home Monday and he’d be tested this week.
On the commission, Howell has been a consistent opponent of mandatory measures to try to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
In March, he and Commissioner Michael O’Donnell voted against a countywide stay-at-home order and Howell was a frequent critic of Gov. Laura Kelly’s statewide mass-gathering and stay-at-home orders that superseded the county’s action to control the virus.
Under pressure from the Republican-controlled Legislature, Kelly early this month abandoned her plan to reopen the state’s economy gradually with safeguards in place, leaving most decisions on virus-fighting to county commission discretion.
Since then, Sedgwick County has turned thumbs-down on any mandatory measures for virus prevention, allowing all businesses to reopen at full capacity if they so choose and offering only voluntary guidelines to discourage virus-spreading behavior.
A week ago, Kelly criticized the Sedgwick County Commission for inaction amid a rising number of new cases.
On Sunday, the Eagle reported that the number of hospitalizations in Wichita is now the highest it has been since the pandemic started.
This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 5:01 AM.
