Coronavirus in rural America (Part XIII): Big NYT feature

This feature story just went live a few hours ago.  It tracks the spread of coronavirus in the rural United States, with the focus at the country level.  The interactive maps and timelines are cool.  But this story by Jack Healy, Sabrina Tavernise, Robert Gebeloff, and Weiyi Cai, is not just data driven.  There's lots of texture, too, including quotes from folks living in rural areas and information about the stress on rural hospitals.

Here's a quote about states that have not yet issued "stay home" or "shelter in place" orders, all of  which are popularly thought of as rural--and all of which have Republican governors.

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,” Ms. 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.

Also from the national media comes this op-ed is from the Washington Post a few days ago, with a foreboding headline for what lies in store for rural America, "The covid-19 crisis is going to get much worse when it hits rural areas."