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Coronavirus Was Slow to Spread to Rural America. Not Anymore.
The NY Times via Yahoo! News ^ | April 10, 2020 | by Jack Healy, Sabrina Tavernise, Robert Gebeloff and Weiyi Cai, The New York Times

Posted on 04/11/2020 4:57:15 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

Grace Rhodes was getting worried last month as she watched the coronavirus tear through New York and Chicago. But her 8,000-person hometown in southern Illinois still had no reported cases, and her boss at her pharmacy job assured her: “It’ll never get here.”

Now it has. A new wave of coronavirus cases is spreading deep into rural corners of the country where people once hoped their communities might be shielded because of their isolation from hard-hit urban centers and the natural social distancing of life in the countryside.

The coronavirus has officially reached nearly three-quarters of the country’s rural counties, with 1 in 7 reporting at least one death. Doctors and elected officials are warning that a late-arriving wave of illness could overwhelm rural communities that are older, poorer and sicker than much of the country, and already dangerously short on medical help.

“Everybody never really thought it would get to us,” said Rhodes, 18, who is studying to become a nurse. “A lot of people are in denial.”

With 42 states now urging people to stay at home, the last holdouts are the Republican governors of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Arkansas. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has suggested that the stricter measures violated personal liberties, and she said her state’s rural character made it better positioned to handle the outbreak.

“South Dakota is not New York City,” Noem said at a news conference last week.

But many rural doctors, leaders and health experts worry that is exactly where their communities are heading, and that they will have fewer hospital beds, ventilators and nurses to handle the onslaught.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: china; fearmongering; irresponsible; journalism; media; notjounalism; nyslimes; virus
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1 posted on 04/11/2020 4:57:15 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Spreading fear and loathing again? Stop it. We need to go back to work and let the scared freaks continue to hide in their basements, fear freaks like you. ( A GOOD THING).


2 posted on 04/11/2020 5:01:42 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn....)
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To: central_va

So the NY slimes is using an 18 year old nursing student as its authority on rural corona overwhelming rural hospitals. A snowflake paper asking a snowflake teenager. Awesome.


3 posted on 04/11/2020 5:03:41 AM PDT by gas_dr (Trial lawyers AND POLITICIANS are Endangering Every Patient in America: INCLUDING THEIR LIBERTIES)
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To: central_va

This virus will kill you.

You in particular.


4 posted on 04/11/2020 5:05:14 AM PDT by Lazamataz (China got this virus right off the bat.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Oh! No!

We’re all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!


5 posted on 04/11/2020 5:07:28 AM PDT by Bruiser 10 (Will you Boogaloo?)
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To: central_va

The scumedia and the political radical left will not let this hysteria die. They will pick and choose hot spots to focus their fake news on right up to the election


6 posted on 04/11/2020 5:10:58 AM PDT by ronnie raygun
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

FOUR authors.


7 posted on 04/11/2020 5:12:52 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople
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To: Lazamataz
Hey Laz fortunately I have no pre existing conditions so I am at no more risk than I am from the regular flu. I am lucky I guess but not alone. 95% of the US population is paying a heavy price to assuage the overblown hyped up fears of a few.

See as adults we should be able to make out decisions about our own risk tolerance.

8 posted on 04/11/2020 5:13:05 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn....)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Yeah, it’s a sucky anecdotal MSM story.

It gets one thing right, though. Rural America is shielded by distance.

There is no magic to a virus. It still has to get to you.


9 posted on 04/11/2020 5:13:35 AM PDT by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

My little area is full of people from St Louis who have recreational property down here. It’s “essential” to fly around these dirt roads on $20-30,000.00 four wheelers and raid our little grocery store on their way home tomorrow. There’s a few that showed up last weekend and stayed all week. Must be non-essential workers who aren’t working right now.


10 posted on 04/11/2020 5:14:21 AM PDT by Pollard (shadowbanned)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

More slime.


11 posted on 04/11/2020 5:14:26 AM PDT by cp124 (Time for America 2.0)
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To: ronnie raygun

None of this made sense a lock down plus forced quarantine AND and social distancing. It seems the two are mutually exclusive. This is what first sent my BS meter to full.


12 posted on 04/11/2020 5:15:54 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn....)
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To: gas_dr

I live in a rural Kentucky county. If its the NYT it must be true. We need at least 500 ventilators, a new temporary 1000 bed hospital, I demand all PPE in New York warehouses be sent to my county. I guess this is the panicked reaction the Slimes was trolling for.


13 posted on 04/11/2020 5:16:38 AM PDT by hardspunned
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Journalism math in action. In Kansas, fully 70% of confirmed cases come from 3 urban counties in the Kansas City and Wichita metro areas. Almost half of our counties still have 0 cases with many of the rest in single digits. In my county, we have 66 confirmed cases with 7 hospitalized and 1 death. That puts up in the second tier of cases, behind the big three. The fact that we share a county line with two of top three counties probably has something to do with the disaster facing our county. Of course out disaster is not the coronusvirus, but the devastating effect on shut down small business.

Unfortunately for the New York Times, we and the rest of the state may have hit the peak. We will see in the next few days.


14 posted on 04/11/2020 5:17:24 AM PDT by centurion316 (.)
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To: ronnie raygun

BINGO


15 posted on 04/11/2020 5:18:54 AM PDT by MHGinTN (A dispensation perspective is a powerful tool for discernment)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
So much fear and loathing.


16 posted on 04/11/2020 5:19:32 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn....)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Hey, is this you?


17 posted on 04/11/2020 5:21:18 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn....)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

What a crock of chit.


18 posted on 04/11/2020 5:21:23 AM PDT by cuban leaf (The political war playing out in every country now: Globalists vs Nationalists)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Is this why Cuomo took their ventilators?


19 posted on 04/11/2020 5:24:02 AM PDT by dgbrown
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
her boss at her pharmacy job assured her: “It’ll never get here.”

Who would believe that kind of empty, magical thinking promise in the first place, especially a person who works at a pharmacy?

(Just the kind of individual the media looks to exploit.)

Sheesh, on any normal day I steer clear of pharmacies, and if I need something near the Rx corner of Wal-Mart, I make it quick.

20 posted on 04/11/2020 5:25:41 AM PDT by Ezekiel (The pun is mightier than the s-word. Goy to the World!)
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