ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla — John Valdes of St. Augustine knows what it’s like to deal with a disease that sweeps across a city and region.
While working during the 1970's in Saudi Arabia, he said a mystery disease killed some of his co-workers and nearly killed him.
That experience taught him a lesson that he wants others to hear regarding the coronavirus.
"I was 28 years old when I got knocked down," Valdes said. "I didn’t know if I was going to get up. I was a construction manager, building hotels."
He said a disease spread through the city of Jeddah where he worked.
"It infected, it seemed like half of the population of the city at the time," he said. "It was hundreds of thousands of people. Our company alone had nearly 300 people in it. Half of those were sick and we had five that actually died from it."
He said that the disease went away, but they still don’t know what it was.
"What we learned from it was absolutely nothing because the next year, another one came through," Valdes said. "And that one got me."
He had to be hospitalized. "I was gurgling and coughing up blood," he remembered.
Forty years later, he still has scar tissue on his lung. His chest sometimes still aches.
Valdes said the lessons of that experience can be applied to what's happening in the world today with the coronavirus.
"What we’ve got to carry away from this coronavirus pandemic is the understanding that this is not something that is a one-off. It will continue to re-occur," he said.
Valdes is a building contractor and also a St. Augustine City Commissioner. He feels governments, at all levels, need to be more prepared.
"We’ve got to put in place protocols and systems to deal with future pandemics, just like we have in place to deal with hurricanes. We are so flat footed-right now," he said.
"I hate to say this, but I think we need to get very serious about shutting everything down," Valdes said. "If businesses and people will not take responsibility to social distance, we're going to have to step in and enforce social distancing. It can be Draconian, but results, if we don't do this, are going to be Draconian."
"People are reacting to me being somewhat overzealous now. Well, I have a reason. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. I felt it," he patted the area over his left lung.