A 35-year-old Greeley man now urging others to take precautions to slow the spread of the new coronavirus after he was released from ventilator care remembers when he didn’t take it all that seriously.

“I’m the typical American. At first, I thought, ‘It can’t happen to me,'” Ernesto Castro said. “I feel naive.”

Castro, a case worker at Monfort Family Clinic in Evans, doesn’t check a lot of boxes for being at risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms. He’s young, strong and rarely gets sick. But there were a couple conditions that made him susceptible: exercise-induced asthma and prediabetes.

When he started feeling ill in mid-March, he thought it could have been problems with his asthma or that he was starting to come down with the flu. As his congestion got worse and he got a fever, his girlfriend pushed him to go see his doctor.

The doctor said Castro was showing all the symptoms of the virus and placed him in self-quarantine, with a note to go get tested in Denver. But Castro’s condition worsened, and he didn’t have the energy to make the drive. On March 20, he was admitted to the UCHealth Greeley Hospital. Castro was struggling to breathe and couldn’t stop coughing.

He was immediately put on oxygen and taken to UCHealth’s Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland. There, they told him they were thinking about putting him in a medically-induced coma and on a ventilator.

Ernesto Castro’s 19-month-old daughter, Camila, sits with her brother, 13-year-old Jordan Castro. (UCHealth/For Greeley Tribune)

Castro became worried at the thought of his children, a 19-month-old and a 13-year-old, growing up without a parent. He badly wanted his family and his girlfriend there to support him, but local hospitals aren’t allowing visitors to prevent COVID-19 spread. When he was taken to the procedure room to be placed into the coma, Castro was terrified.

“My heart was beating a million beats per second,” he said. “I was terrified. That’s when I remember closing my eyes and falling asleep.”

After nearly a week, Castro woke up, but his mind was still a fog. He couldn’t remember his name, what year it was or who the president was. Hospital staff’s attentive care helped Castro improve every day and night, he said.

“If it wasn’t for my faith, if it wasn’t for my kids, if it wasn’t for my girlfriend, my family, all my loved ones, all the prayers, all the positive energy, I don’t think I would be here,” he said. “Especially (if it wasn’t for) all the medical staff at UCHealth.”

On March 30, Castro was released. He still wasn’t ready to go back to work, due to the stretch of inactivity and the toll the ventilator took on his body. Castro described his gait as that of an elderly man or a child learning how to walk.

Castro said he continues to work on his recovery, doing physical therapy, practicing taking deep breaths, reading and doing puzzles. Castro, who described himself as proud and stubborn, said he’s been taking it slow, to avoid pushing his body too far and winding up back at the hospital.

Castro hopes those who hear his story will understand the virus is not a joke.

“Please take this seriously,” he said. “This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through in my life.”

Castro has rarely gone outside since the start of the outbreak in Colorado, but he sometimes looks out the window and sees people failing to follow the stay-at-home order or physical distancing guidelines. Family of those who have died from the virus have also reported concerns about people not taking the virus seriously.

Dr. Mark Wallace, executive director of the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment, said the local public’s weaker response to physical distancing and stay-at-home orders might be a factor in why Weld County continues to have one of the highest case rates in the state.

“While we have seen a lot of people do a good job at trying to telecommute to work and distance themselves, I’m not sure our response has been as strong as some of our sister counties,” Wallace previously told the Greeley Tribune.

Thomas Endres, director of the UNC School of Communication and a professor of communication studies, said political division across the country before the outbreak laid the path for even more division as people struggle with the invisible enemy. At the center of the controversy is President Donald Trump, Endres said.

“Though an overgeneralization, it is fair to say that Trump supporters believe in limited government influence, and they trust his actions and the news outlets that present him in a positive light,” he wrote in an email. “On the other hand, those that do not support the President are often in favor of government support and intervention on issues like the health and welfare of citizens, and they seek out confirmation from news outlets favorable to those views.”

Those supporters and critics become more polarized as the crisis grows, as news reports from biased sources on both sides are exaggerated on social media and through memes. Because people on either end of the spectrum communicate mostly, if not exclusively, with like-minded people, information is flowing about the virus as if it were a game of “telephone,” Endres said.

That distorted chain of information can have disastrous consequences, such as when an Arizona couple in their 60s heard politicians and TV news anchors talk about chloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, as a possible way to fight COVID-19 and ingested fish tank cleaner listing chloroquine as an ingredient, the Washington Post reported. Banner Health issued a news release warning people not to take chloroquine to treat or prevent the virus after the man died and the wife was admitted to the hospital for critical care.

Endres said there are usually three types of narratives people tend to latch onto when making sense of a confusing and chaotic world:

Social stories that focus on unity, community and looking out for each other; Pragmatic stories that focus on efficiency and getting the job done; Righteous stories that give emotional images to rally around and tell believers what they should think is moral or immoral.

While the first two types of narratives encourage people to wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus and to follow other measures, the third type leads to exaggerated claims the virus was just like the flu or that things would be back to normal by Easter, Endres said. Combined with a prior belief in limited government, people who don’t believe the virus is dangerous or a hoax may take offense to the idea of government intrusion telling them to change their behaviors.

Endres said it’s not clear how to reverse the polarization, but that people must start by looking for common ground.

“This is different than a crisis like 9/11, where we had faces and names of the attackers. The country rallied behind President George Bush because, honestly, it was easy to do so,” Endres said. “Most people were not directly impacted. We still had our jobs and our daily freedoms. This invisible culprit leaves us with nothing to blame, so we point our fingers at each other.”

Ernesto Castro’s girlfriend, Claudia, and he pose for a photo with Castro’s 19-month-old daughter, Camila. (UCHealth/For Greeley Tribune)

When Castro looks out his window and sees people ignoring public heath guidance, he said he just thinks how the situation won’t get any better until everyone starts to take it seriously.

“So please, if I can give any advice, please make sure you follow the proper measures, listen and through everything that’s asked,” Castro said. “The faster we do this, the faster we can get back to our normal lives.”

— Trevor Reid covers public safety issues for the Greeley Tribune. Connect with Trevor at (970) 392-4492, treid@greeleytribune.com or on Twitter, @treid71.