Greetings from Chautauqua, the only county in Kansas where COVID-19 isn’t an emergency. This bucolic and remote county, nestled on the Oklahoma border 100 highway miles southeast of Wichita, is the only place in Kansas that isn’t under a COVID disaster emergency declaration, according to the Kansas Association of Counties. “We didn’t feel like we needed it,” said Rodney Shaw, who serves on the three-member County Commission that doubles as the Board of Public Health. If you wear a mask in Sedan, the Chautauqua County seat, you might as well hang a sign around your neck saying “Not From Around Here.” Coming here is like stepping back into 2019, those halcyon days before a global contagion that would kill an estimated 2.6 million people, including more than 527,000 Americans.
Source: Wichita News
