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Does Adams County need a curfew?

Is a stay-home order for city residents absolutely necessary?

If the all of the pleas from local leaders, information from task force members and counsel from healthcare providers haven’t convinced you, listen to the area’s first patient to test positive with COVID-19.

What at first felt like a cold turned into a horrifying 16-day ordeal for one local resident.

So horrifying that the man thought he might die.

Fearing that many people in the Miss-Lou are not taking the new coronavirus seriously, local physician Blane Mire convinced his patient to come forward with his story.

Through the ordeal the man experienced a range of symptoms, including a cough that grew increasingly worse.

“He has never had asthma, but he couldn’t get any air,” the man’s wife said.

The situation deteriorated to the point that the man and his wife decided to go to the emergency department of a Baton Rouge hospital in the middle of night.

“People need to know how bad this is,” the man’s wife said. “I can see why so many people are dying from this.”

The man’s story should be a cautionary tale for us all who, if even for a brief moment, doubted the seriousness of the COVID-19 crisis.

Mire predicts that the area may have a couple of hundred people who are carrying the virus with little or no symptoms. If true, the virus has the potential to spread unchecked unless measures are taken to slow the disease.

We do not need to hear any more harrowing tales to understand the COVID-19 crisis is here in the Miss-Lou.

Now is the time to take the crisis seriously — stay home for your safety and for the safety of the community before it’s too late.