The Facebook post just before 9 last Sunday night was the kind you couldn’t help but stop and read.
“Friends: I’m asking for prayers for my hometown of Logan, Kansas,” wrote Andy Stanton in a post accompanied by a picture of a serene, small-town Main Street and a set of praying hands. 
The rural northwest Kansas community had been hit hard by the coronavirus, he said. More than half the 35 residents of its nursing home along with many staff members had tested positive, with four residents dying in the past week. (Three more have died since his post.)
“Other people in the community have tested positive, also,” Stanton wrote. “More than half of the population of Logan is over 50 years old — with more than half of that over 65 years old. Please extend your prayers to the 500+ residents and all of the extended families of Logan. Our little town is hurting right now.”
Within hours, the post had generated hundreds of comments and been shared more than a thousand times.
Logan, population about 540, and Phillips County are an illustration of rural America during the global coronavirus pandemic. For months, the county had managed to dodge the wrath of COVID-19, with only a handful of confirmed cases cropping up even as the large metropolitan counties saw them explode. County officials, believing the threat was minimal, lifted all restrictions at the end of May.
And when Gov. Laura Kelly issued an order on July 2 requiring the wearing of masks in public places, county commissioners chose not to mandate but only recommend them.
Now, the town is dealing with the stark reality that no place is virus proof. And the local nursing home has become ground zero in the battle to stop the spread.
“There are 18 counties that make up northwest Kansas as a region,” said Pete Rogers, Phillips County public health officer. “In those 18 counties, for a long time we only had 30 or 40 total cases. We just weren’t able to dodge it any longer.”
Across Kansas, the virus has now spread to all but three of the state’s 105 counties. And while more populated counties like Johnson and Wyandotte continue to see their cases sharply rise, rural counties across the Plains are getting their first dose of COVID-19 clusters.
Stanton, a marketing consultant from Hays, said he put the post about Logan on Facebook because he cares about the town where he was raised. His parents both grew up there — he even had the same first grade teacher they did. She’s now in Logan Manor, along with his aunt, who has tested positive. And Stanton knew three of the first four residents who died. One was his Boy Scout leader, one was his third grade teacher’s mother and one was his dad’s first cousin.
“It’s such a small town and everybody is connected,” he said. “And it’s really affecting everyone.”
Stanton said he was “blown away” by the reaction to his post.
“It just went kind of crazy,” he said. “I finally had to turn the notifications off on my phone, because it was exploding.”
Larry Meili, chairman of the Phillips County Commission, said few have been untouched by the coronavirus.
“We’ve only got 5,500 people in the whole county,” said Meili, of Phillipsburg, the county seat. “Our kids, grandkids, all know each other clear around the county because of 4-H and other activities. When something happens in a little town like that, everybody knows people who are affected by it.”
