- Experts say a number of factors have contributed to the spike in COVID-19 cases in rural areas of the United States.
- For starters, rural communities were not hit particularly hard by the first phases of the pandemic, but that has changed with the Delta variant.
- Experts add that religion, politics, and mistrust of government has also played a role.
In the final week of August, Kristi Brasher felt the sting of what it’s like to live in rural America during the Delta coronavirus variant surge.
“I lost five friends. Five! And all in the same hospital,” the northern Texas resident told Healthline.
She’s not alone.
As the Delta variant ravages rural areas across the nation, experts are both digging into the whys and looking for the hows to get past the surge.
Just how stark is the difference between most urban and most rural areas of the nation in how they react to the Delta variant?
Dr. Janis Orlowski, MACP, the chief healthcare officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), believes she’s seen the foundation of the reason firsthand.
Orlowski lives in Washington, D.C., but travels regularly to places like rural northern Wisconsin.
“In D.C., 100 percent of my neighbors wear a mask indoors. It’s just what we do,” she told Healthline.
In rural Wisconsin, where she was this past week, that was not the case.
“Other than my own, I have not seen a single mask,” she said. “Masks work. They do.”
What’s at play?
People on the front lines say it’s a perfect storm of personal freedom beliefs, mistrust of the government, a culture that tends toward taking care of things on their own, highly shared misinformation, and, yes, faith.
Source: healthline