COVID-19 affects business owner, his employees and his family

A Bismarck business owner is sharing his personal and business experience related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

CJ Muscha, owner of Dak Diesel in Bismarck, says 12 weeks ago, one of his employees, at his diesel truck repair shop in Bismarck, contracted COVID-19. Days later, Muscha said he got a runny nose.

“I went in on Monday morning to get tested,” he tells The Flag’s Scott Hennen. “It was one of those things; I was thinking it was a bunch of BS.”

The subsequent COVID-19 test, performed that Monday, showed Muscha had contracted the virus. That started the roller coaster. He says all of his employees, at the shop, either tested positive or came down with the symptoms of COVID-19.

It continued to spread.

His four-year-old daughter came down with the croup a mere two weeks after Muscha tested positive. They took her to the local emergency room, where she was diagnosed with croup and was subsequently put on a ventilator. She was out of the emergency room within two hours.

While in the emergency room, Muscha’s daughter was tested for COVID-19. She also tested positive.

Muscha says his wife was told to quarantine their daughter in the basement, away from everybody.

“Before this whole COVID pandemic, that would be child abuse,” he said. “You’d be locked away for that.”

Muscha says his wife also lost her sense of taste and smell for a period of two weeks. She also was diagnosed with COVID-19.

In the end, though, he says theses cases were mild, compared to cases reported across the nation, regarding a virus that has, according to the CDC, affected more than three million and killed more than 130,000.

“It was nothing worse than the common flu,” Muscha says.