This week, the Dog is yielding space for a much more important message from The Missouri Press Association and the team here at the House of News: 

As the United States faces the worst public health crisis in a generation, we want you to know we are here for you — and with you.

Whatever happens, whenever it happens, your newspaper will be there for you. We’ll be there to let you know how our community is managing through this crisis — from business to government to the health care system and schools to the drastic impact on individuals and families.

And we’ll be there to let you know about the good and extraordinary things happening in the midst of this crisis — the health workers putting themselves in harm’s way to care for the sick, the individuals who continue to report to work for jobs deemed too essential to society, the volunteers bringing food to elderly people who cannot leave their homes, and the school districts working to ensure their students don’t go hungry even if they don’t go to the classroom.

Amidst the sadness and anxiety, there are uplifting moments that remind us of the resilience of the human spirit, and we’ll be there to document those too.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said the timeline for the future of coronavirus in Missouri will be measured in months, not days or weeks, and it will put a strain on the state’s people and economy.

“We’ve got a lot of days we gotta go through,” the governor said recently. “This is just the beginning. We’re two or three months, at a bare minimum, that we’re going to have to dveal with this issue.”

But we will be here to help you make sense of this pandemic and its effect on our community.

Having fact-based, reliable reporting that provides public scrutiny and oversight is more important than ever.

Together, across the decades, this newspaper and its readers have navigated horrific events — natural disasters, terrorism, financial downturns, periods of extreme political and societal division.

This challenge is greater than any of those, but, rest assured, we’ll be here for you.

Missouri is a resilient state where people come together to build and rebuild. Let’s stick together, and we will come through this, too.