By Jacob Farmer / [email protected]
Dr. Paul Bunge begins his new book about COVID-19 by inviting readers to join him on a journey — one he knows will be uncomfortable, perhaps even full of disagreements.
Bunge, a former U.S. Navy physician, worked through the COVID pandemic while practicing as an internist at Providence Centralia Hospital and Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia.
His medical staffing company, Bird’s Eye Medical, proved instrumental in coordinating mass vaccinations at places such as the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds in Lewis County, along with other locations in Pierce County and beyond.
“Those Three Years: COVID-19, One Doctor’s Journey, and a Prescription for National Healing” is partly a historical account from a doctor operating at the ground level of a pandemic. It is also a memoir and celebration of the many people with whom Bunge collaborated.
“One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I was so impressed with other people,” Bunge said during an interview with The Chronicle earlier this month.
Those people include the pharmacist who’d regularly make the drive down from Port Angeles to work at vaccination events in Lewis County. Or the former engineer who became the perfect logistics lead for Bird’s Eye Medical’s vaccine storage and administration.
Bunge used his own story to help tie the threads together.
“People in Lewis County can get a better picture of what happened,” Bunge added. “What happens in their hospital, generally speaking, and what happened during COVID and how so many Lewis County people rose up and were heroes.”
Bunge was born in Dodge City, Kansas. His father, who died when Bunge was 15, served as a minister in Canada. Bunge grew up in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
He returned to the U.S. to attend the University of Missouri-Columbia for medical school, where he joined the Navy while on a scholarship. As a volunteer, Bunge spent significant time in Liberia responding to the Ebola crisis.
He’s been in Washington state for over 20 years.
In “Those Three Years,” Bunge details practical challenges both unique and unexpected, such as finding the right medical-grade “super-freezer” that could store Pfizer vaccines at precisely -80 degrees Celsius. Not surprisingly, these were hard to find — especially before vaccines were made widely available.
Bunge later sold the freezer to Northwest Pediatric Center for $1.
Other challenges were personal.
The longtime doctor, like countless others, watched as the pandemic affected people’s lives, and not just in terms of health. Bunge saw the ways in which differing perspectives on the disease led to division, anger and resentment.
In one section, Bunge describes a friend who contracted COVID and later died after attending a church with an “anti-mask sentiment.” As a practicing Christian, Bunge struggled reconciling what he deemed as defiant stances at odds with ensuring the health of a church’s parishioners.
Bunge’s profession suddenly put him at odds with other people, too.
In conversation with The Chronicle, Bunge contrasted this experience with a time in Liberia when the pastor of a church he was attending called him out during a service, not to admonish him for his public health stances, but rather as part of a plea to get the congregation to wash their hands and distance themselves from those with the Ebola virus.
The pastor then had Bunge speak to the congregation.
“To go through that experience and then be here and it’s like, people don’t want you to talk,” Bunge said. “People don’t want you to say anything. People want to keep it quiet.”
In Bunge’s view, people suffered because the loudest voices were allowed to spread misinformation. Sometimes the voices came from inside the church; sometimes they came from local leaders.
In the book, Bunge recalls when Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza responded to mask mandates by telling residents, “Don’t be a sheep.”
“Whatever his purpose in saying this, he missed his chance to encourage people to take the pandemic seriously, and he undermined every other messenger in the county,” Bunge writes.
The doctor knows you may not agree with his take. In fact, that’s one of the reasons he wrote the book. To encourage discussion and promote healing. By telling his own story, he hopes others will gather the strength to revisit their own, first by grieving, then by listening.
“We need to listen to each other,” Bunge said. “We need to tell our stories. We need to grieve in many areas, because if we’re not talking, and we’re just fighting, we can’t address these very difficult issues, whether it’s COVID or immigration, or whatever it is.”
As Bunge puts it, everybody lost something during COVID.
“Some people lost their friends, some people lost their parents. Some people lost their freedom. Some people lost their school graduations. We all lost something … So, I think processing that is so important and I hope this book helps people to do that or think about their own stories,” Bunge said.
“Those Three Years” is currently available for sale at Browsers Bookshop in Olympia.
You can also buy it online from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Paul-Bunge/dp/B0GFQ84NN2, or from Lulu at https://tinyurl.com/3j2mm3uk.
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