Back-to-back Super Bowls for Chiefs are bookends on a Kansas City turned upside down

Although the Kansas City Chiefs came up short in a disappointing 31-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday, the team’s unprecedented run of success this season has been a source of civic pride and unity during one of the most trying periods Kansas City has faced in recent memory.

Only seven franchises in NFL history have ever won back-to-back world championships. Kansas City had the chance to become the first team to repeat in 17 years.

But looking back at the city the victorious Chiefs returned to last year makes it clear how tumultuous these past 12 months have been.

Today, the struggle to defeat the coronavirus pandemic is the region’s dominant challenge. Businesses have closed. Kids are not in school. Teachers aren’t vaccinated, and people continue to die. On Sunday, the Kansas City metropolitan area reported its 1,784th coronavirus-related death since the pandemic began in March.

At least 134,783 positive cases have been reported in Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, according to data maintained by The Star.

Worse, the first confirmed case of the B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant in Missouri was reported in an adult in Marion County, state health officials said late Saturday.

Unless all Kansas Citians take recommended precautions to wear masks and observe social distancing for the foreseeable future, the pandemic could last well past the summer months, Kansas City Health Department Director Rex Archer said.

The new strain is more easily transmitted and more contagious, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ellis County in Kansas reported last week the state’s first case of the variant, which was first discovered in the U.K. in September.

Archer says now is the time for area residents without breathing problems to consider wearing two masks as an extra level of protection to help slow the spread. Based on the latest recommendation from Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the president, double masking, “makes logical sense,” Archer said.

“The new variant is here, in Kansas and 19 other states,” he said.

Vaccine rollouts in Kansas City have been slowed by bureaucratic decisions that defy logic. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has not scheduled mass sites of inoculation in the Kansas City area. Rural areas of the state have been made a priority for the vaccine instead.

Health officials worried that even the pared-down crowd allowed in the stadium Sunday could lead to a superspreader event. For Chiefs fans who traveled to Tampa to attend the game in person, Archer recommends a voluntary quarantine and self-monitoring for 14 days.

Anyone exhibiting symptoms should be tested for COVID-19 after about five days, Archer said. Asymptomatic people who have been exposed to the virus should undergo testing as well.

While Kansas City’s hopes weren’t realized Sunday, the Chiefs still did their home town proud. A second straight trip to the Super Bowl was the distraction we needed during an otherwise trying year-long stretch.

For the region’s sake, let’s hope the team makes it back to the big game for the third consecutive year in a post-pandemic world. To make that a reality, the community needs to come together to slow the spread of the coronavirus and its new variant.

This story was originally published February 7, 2021 at 9:17 PM.