Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXIII): Recent reports from Minnesota to Arizona to Oregon

The first story is reported by the New York Times out of Umatilla County, Oregon, population 75,889, in the northeastern part of the state.  The headline for Kate Conger's story is "‘We’re Not an Island’: Rural Outbreaks Challenge Oregon’s Virus Success." The subhead says as much or more, "Oregon was sandwiched between two states that had big coronavirus outbreaks but managed to keep its numbers low. Until it couldn’t."  Here's an excerpt that focuses on rural Oregon:

The increase has been most drastic in rural parts of the state where outbreaks have been spurred on by large gatherings at churches, food-processing facilities, funerals and graduation parties. 

Ms. Brown has ordered Oregonians to wear masks in public buildings, starting July 1. She has also introduced a spending package to fund protective equipment and quarantine pay for farm workers.

I last wrote about what was happening in this part of Oregon in the relatively early days of the pandemic and sheltering-in-place.

The second rural-focused story is by Bloomberg news, out of Austin, Minnesota, population 24,718, a meat-packing center in the southern part of the state, right near the Iowa state line.  (It also happens to be the hometown of Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl).  Here's an excerpt from Adam Minter's story:

The course of the Covid-19 pandemic in rural Mower County, Minnesota, is hand-written across six easel-sized sheets of paper affixed to the wall of the local Emergency Operations Center. Six cases and no deaths were recorded on March 22, the first entry. Pam Kellogg, Mower County's community health division manager, points to the fourth sheet, covering much of May. “It was the third week when things really hit us.” On May 31, Mower reported 64 new cases, for a total of 318 out of a population of about 40,000. By mid-June, it had the second-highest case incidence in Minnesota, and by the end of the month it had nearly 1,000 infections. 

Mower’s experience is increasingly common. Of the 10 U.S. counties with the highest number of recent Covid-19 cases per resident, nine are nonmetropolitan areas with populations under 50,000. There are several factors behind that surge, including the prevalence of older populations, meat-processing plants and communal living among immigrant labor forces. But what it adds up to is a quietly growing crisis. For many of these rural communities, confronting the coronavirus pandemic will require a lot more than issuing stay-at-home orders — and there won’t be much help from Washington or anywhere else.

Other coronavirus reporting with a rural angle is here, out of Bisbee, Arizona (population 5,575), from Kurtis Lee of the Los Angeles Times.  The headline is "The 1918 flu hammered this Arizona mining town. Now a new scourge looms."  Here's an excerpt:

As the death toll climbs for the novel coronavirus — Arizona is a hot spot in the U.S. with intensive care unit beds almost at capacity — many people in this small, reinvented town have started to look back 102 years, searching for warning signs and lessons of hope. 

The magnitude of infections in this state is alarming, with cases growing over the last three weeks by 150% and eclipsing more than 2,200 deaths. And, like the century-old flu that preceded it, the virus has upended lives even in far-flung outposts like Bisbee (population 5,000), which sits defiantly tucked in a canyon 12 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

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At the Copper Queen Library — one of the oldest in the state, which remained open during floods, fires and Wild West shootouts — a sign near the entrance explaining the current closure reminds people that during the 1918 flu the library shuttered its doors for 76 days. 

The library — which has 32,000 books, including ones on the town’s history — has now been closed 99 days and counting. 

While Cochise County, where Bisbee is located, has recorded only 22 deaths from COVID-19, the local economy has begun to crater.

Another story out of rural southeastern Arizona is here, from NPR, about the death of a teacher in the Hayden-Winkelman school District, which straddles Pinal and Gila counties.  Wikipedia says Hayden, population 662, is "in the process of becoming a Ghost town."

Here is a story about food insecurity and how one community in California's northern Sierra is responding, from Capital Public Radio's Rural Reporting Project.  Nina Sparling reports. 

And here is the latest from The Daily Yonder on what's happening in rural places.   The headline for Tim Marema's story is "Rural America’s Daily Rate of New Infections Climbs 150% in Last Month."  the subhead is, "A list of the rural counties with the highest rates of new cases includes many with prisons and meatpacking plants. Many other counties are those with a high proportion of non-whites."