Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXLIV): Sarah Smarsh on vaccine anger and blame

 In Sunday's New York Times: 

In the spring, I received my Covid-19 vaccination shots from county health workers in an old building on the main street of a tiny Kansas town.

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Fellow county residents waited their turn in muddy boots and faded work jackets while the April wind stirred their fields of early wheat. There was corn to plant, but they had found time to make long drives to what was then the only vaccination site in 500 square miles. Our ages, politics and backgrounds varied, but we were mostly white, rural people who wanted to live.

Yet vaccination rates are still low in Kansas. Smarsh continues:

I cringe when I see the rampant stereotypes on social media painting the unvaccinated as rural white folks, by now a frequent scapegoat for our country’s ills. “Spreadnecks,” I’ve seen them newly termed (as in, “rednecks” spreading the virus). Never mind that, per the C.D.C., the daily case rates in urban and nonmetropolitan areas closely track one another.

The column is well worth a read in its entirety.  

The part about "the only vaccination site in 500 square miles" reminded me of something else I've been fretting about:  the lack of easy availability of the coronavirus vaccine in my home county.  COVID-19--the Delta variant in particular--has been raging in the Ozarks for six weeks.  I wrote this last month, based on a feature out of Baxter County, two counties over from Newton County, where I grew up.   And I wrote this a week before that regarding places where cases were spiking--including the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.   

Everyday I get an email from the New York Times with COVID data--including that regarding vaccine rates--about the places I've regularly searched for the Times interactive website.  These include Newton county, where the vaccination rate has remained a stubborn 23% for weeks--in spite of the spike in cases in the area.  

I was thus very frustrated to see in the July 28, 2021 issue of the weekly Newton County Times that the first vaccination clinic scheduled in Newton County, sponsored by the regional hospital (North Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Harrison/Boone County) and Jasper School, is this Friday, August 13.  That's the Friday before the public school convenes for the new school year and a week into the school staff in-service.  That's not particularly helpful if we want to make vaccination easy, stem the spread of coronavirus, and save lives.  By the way, the headline is also interesting, "Jasper to host open house Pfizer Clinic."  The use of "Pfizer" but not "COVID 19" or "coronavirus" is interesting.  Also, the headline says "open house," but the story details indicate that an appointment is necessary.