Tisha Coleman has lived in close-knit Linn County, Kansas, for 42 years and never felt so alone. As the public health administrator, she’s struggled every day of the coronavirus pandemic to keep her rural county along the Missouri border safe. In this community with no hospital, she’s failed to persuade her neighbors to wear masks and take precautions against COVID-19, even as cases rise. In return, she’s been harassed, sued, vilified and called a Democrat, an insult in her circles. Even her husband hasn’t listened to her, refusing to require customers to wear masks at the family’s hardware store in Mound City. … By November, the months of fighting over masks and quarantines were already wearing her down. Then she got COVID-19, likely from her husband, who she thinks picked it up at the hardware store. Her mother got it, too, and died Sunday, 11 days after she was put on a ventilator.