Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXLII): New York Times feature on north central Arkansas hot spot hits close to home

The Sharon LaFraniere story is dateline Mountain Home, Arkansas, and the headline is, "In Undervaccinated Arkansas, Covid Upends Life All Over Again." Here's an excerpt: 

While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a city of fewer than 13,000 people not far from the Missouri border. A principal reason, health officials say, is the emergence of the new, far more contagious variant called Delta, which now accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States.

The variant has highlighted a new divide in America, between communities with high vaccination rates, where it causes hardly a ripple, and those like Mountain Home that are undervaccinated, where it threatens to upend life all over again.

In Baxter County, where the hospital is, fewer than a third of residents are fully vaccinated — below both the state and the national averages. Even fewer people are protected in surrounding counties that the hospital serves.

“It’s absolutely flooded,” said Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, as she made the rounds of 2 West one morning last week.

I wrote this last week about what was happening COVID-wise in the region.  Here's a New York Times health care story about Baxter County from 2017, focused on the regional hospital as an economic engine for the area, which has attracted many retirees and better qualified doctors than one associates with rural regions.  Journalist Patricia Cohen also notes in her feature that Baxter County is Trump country.  

Postscript:  A few weeks later, the Wall Street Journal ran this feature about coronavirus impacts in Greenwood, Arkansas, part of the Forth Smith Metro Area in the west central part of the state.