PENDLETON — One of John Shafer’s constituents couldn’t have put it more bluntly — pass a resolution encouraging residents of this Eastern Oregon county to ignore Gov. Kate Brown’s new stay-home orders, or I won’t vote for you.

Shafer, who is chairman of the Umatilla County board of commissioners, isn’t willing to take that defiant stance.

“I guess I’m not going to get his vote,” said Shafer on Friday, July 31 — the same day the governor made Umatilla County the first and only in the state so far to return to stay-home status in an effort to stem the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus.

The county is the state’s current viral epicenter. At 234 cases for every 10,000 people, it has had more than five times the rate of infections as the state average. About 23% of people who’ve been tested recently have learned they have the virus — and that’s more than four times the state average.

Meanwhile, after conducting a random sampling of residents in the city of Hermiston, Oregon State University estimates a startling one in six residents had the virus as of last weekend.

Even so, “I’ve heard from way more people who are unhappy than people who are happy,” Shafer said of the governor’s new stay-home order.

The move has left residents across the state wondering if their counties are next.

Back in March, Brown ordered the state’s more than 4.1 million residents to leave home only for essential tasks, then started lifting her order for most counties in phases about seven weeks later on May 15. Mandating that residents remain at home once again would certainly draw grumbles from a certain portion of the population in any part of the state. So it’s no surprise that her reinstated order has sparked a particularly bitter response in Umatilla County.

Some residents say Brown has never been popular in this conservative, mostly Republican county of 78,000, which is geographically larger than Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties combined but has just 4% of the population.

In 2018, when Brown ran for reelection, she won 29% of the vote compared to Republican challenger Knute Buehler’s 64%. Since she made her stay-home announcement July 30, Brown’s name has stirred up plenty of animosity as swimming pools and gyms close, and bars and restaurants are left to offer only takeout orders for at least the next three weeks. Churches and civic or cultural events are limited to 25 participants.

Hermiston City Councilmember David McCarthy said he isn’t “particularly excited” about the governor’s new stay-home orders, but he doesn’t know what the answer is “when literally everywhere seems like it’s on fire.”

He said he’s a member of a community Facebook group where many users shrug off the county’s COVID-19 death rate, which the Oregon Health Authority says is about 1%. That’s half the statewide average of 2%, and even farther below counties such as Polk, Linn and Benton with 4% death rates and Wallowa with a 5% death rate, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

“With a 1% mortality rate, they’re saying, ‘I’ll take my chances,’” McCarthy said. “It’s unfortunate because 1% of Umatilla County is 780 people. Are we OK with 780 people dying? I’m not.”

More than 1,900 cases have been identified in Umatilla County so far, and 23 people have died.

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No doubt, the governor’s order has drawn praise from a segment of Umatilla County who say they’ve been watching the numbers worsen for the past six weeks and anxiously waited for the governor to take tough action. Some Oregonians who’ve taken to Twitter have urged Brown to ignore the “naysayers” and “Stay strong!” or go even further by placing new stay-home orders on the entire state or at least segments of it, including Multnomah County.

The think tank OSPIRG urged Brown on July 31 to take statewide action by closing all nonessential businesses, limiting restaurants to only takeout service and allowing Oregonians to leave home only for food, medicine or exercise. The local group joined its national affiliate, U.S.PIRG, in calling for widespread closures coast to coast — to “shut it down, start it over, do it right.”

“Gov. Brown needs to hit the reset button,” said OSPIRG’s Numi Lee Griffith. “Although we slowed the virus down in the spring, we moved too quickly to reopen without hitting key benchmarks to be able to squash future outbreaks before they explode. And now we’re facing the consequences.”

New infections in Oregon have been surging for the past two months, and daily reported death counts have reached all-time highs. As of July 31, the state had reported 18,492 coronavirus cases and 322 related deaths.

The governor announced July 30 that she has added Multnomah County, as well as Marion and Hood River counties, to her “Watchlist” that’s now 10 counties long. The list is comprised of counties where COVID-19 is spreading fast and public health officials have been baffled by the alarming portion of cases that they haven’t been able to trace to a specific source.

In Multnomah County, officials haven’t been able to trace the source of at least 56% of new cases, according to the latest two weeks of data available. That translates to 588 of 1,043 new infections that were untraceable and transmitted through what officials call “sporadic spread.”

Baker, Jefferson, Lake, Malheur, Morrow, Umatilla and Wasco counties are also on the “Watchlist” and could be next to rollback their reopenings. The governor rolled back Morrow’s status from Phase 2 to Phase 1, meaning pools and movie theaters must close and religious, civic and cultural gatherings are restricted to 50 people indoors and out.

Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, didn’t directly answer a question about which of the 10 counties are closest to returning to stay-home status if their situations continue to worsen, but said the governor could take a variety actions. Those range from restricting the operations of individual types of businesses to rolling back entire counties to Phase 1 or baseline status, also known as stay-home status.

“As the governor has said from the beginning of the reopening process, if we continue to see COVID-19 spread in our communities, all options are on the table,” Boyle said.

Boyle said the governor took “more drastic and urgent action” in Umatilla and Morrow counties “because the virus is spreading like wildfire there and lives are at stake.”

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Mark Rodriguez of Hermiston is one of those Umatilla County residents who is delighted with the governor for taking action in his county. But he knows not everyone is going to listen — just as he’s seen a small number shun statewide mask orders or continue to throw parties or go on outings together with no physical distancing.

“They want a summer like we have every year, but this year is different,” Rodriguez said. “We have a major crisis on our hands and we have to take action.”

Rodriguez supports the governor’s renewed restrictions even though they continue to hinder his ability to get a job. He’s currently unemployed.

“It’s scary, knowing how it’s been thriving in our community,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t want to get it, and I don’t want to infect others.”

Hermiston City Councilor Lori Davis, too, supports the governor’s action, despite the “kinda strong ‘Recall Kate’ effort around town.”

Davis was one of 471 residents who were randomly swabbed for the coronavirus last weekend. She heard back July 31 that she’d tested positive.

“I have no symptoms and feel fine,” Davis, 56, wrote in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “…Totally caught off guard.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 40% of people with the virus show no symptoms.

Davis said she wears a mask and doesn’t know where she caught the virus, but added that she works at Two Rivers Correctional Institution. As of last week, an outbreak that started in late June had grown to 19 employees, inmates or others linked to the prison. Davis’ positive test result makes that at least 20.

Outbreaks at the prison, a nursing home and at least 11 job sites have led some residents and officials to believe that beating back the virus can be done by focusing on tougher safety measures at those locations — rather than an all-out stay-home order.

More than 160 cases have been linked to the french fry processor Lamb Weston, 52 to the Regency Hermiston Nursing and Rehab Center, 28 to a Walmart Distribution Center and 15 to a Walmart Supercenter store. Even at the local hospital, there is more worry: 23 cases so far have been traced to Good Shepherd hospital.

Shafer, the chairman of the county board of commissioners, said even though he’s not willing to urge his constituents to defy the governor’s orders, he thinks the virus can be fought with other measures.

For one, because of the many outbreaks at workplaces, he said every employee in every indoor workplace should wear a mask, even if they’re more than 6 feet apart and they don’t interact with the public. Shafer noted that the governor isn’t requiring employees who don’t interact with the public to cover up if they maintain at least 6 feet from coworkers.

Shafer said the county had been preparing to lobby the governor with that idea. But Shafer said the governor’s office told him public health officials can’t be sure of where the virus is spreading because of the high percentage of new infections that can’t be traced to known sources. That figure in Umatilla County stood at 51% last week.

“We’re shutting down swimming pools, churches, bowling alleys — we’ve had zero cases from there,” Shafer said. “The places that are not the problem are the places getting shutdown.”

This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.