"On April 10, the president predicted the U.S. wouldn’t see 100,000 deaths. That milestone was reached May 27."
"Nowhere was the lack of leadership seen as more crucial than in testing, a key to breaking the chain of contagion.
“We have from the very beginning lacked a national testing strategy,” Nuzzo said. “For reasons I can’t truly fathom we’ve refused to develop one.”"
'Unfathomable': US death toll from coronavirus hits 200,000
"The real number of dead from the crisis could be significantly higher: As many as 215,000 more people than usual died in the U.S. from all causes during the first seven months of 2020, according to CDC figures. The death toll from COVID-19 during the same period was put at about 150,000 by Johns Hopkins."
"America's 200,000 COVID-19 Deaths: Small Cities And Towns Bear A Growing Share"
"When COVID-19 claimed its first 100,000 lives in the U.S., Hidalgo County, Texas, seemed to have avoided the worst of it. The county, which sits on the border with Mexico, had just 10 deaths when the U.S. crossed that tragic milestone on May 27.
But the U.S. has now doubled its death count to top 200,000 victims, and Hidalgo County has become one of the deadliest hot spots for COVID-19. Despite the lack of dense urban areas there — its largest city, McAllen, has fewer than 150,000 residents — the disease has killed more than 1,500 people across the county.
"We knew we were going to see an increase, but we could not foresee the increase we got," says Eduardo Olivarez, the chief administrative officer of the county health department.
This summer, COVID-19 hit hospitals in McAllen, Texas, hard. With the U.S. exceeding 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the share of deaths occurring in rural places and small cities is rising.
Eric Gay/AP
"Once we started seeing a sharp increase in fatalities, and the community started reflecting that it was their parents, friends, grandparents — once that started impacting them — the community really started sensing, 'Oh, my God, this is really extremely serious. We need to take heed.' "
Hidalgo County is one of the most extreme examples of how the coronavirus has shifted from dealing its heaviest blows to northeastern urban areas to now reaching all corners of the country. As the death count grows, smaller towns and rural communities bear a growing share of the burden of COVID-19.
An NPR analysis finds that the share of COVID-19 deaths outside places considered large metro areas by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has grown dramatically since the country passed its first 100,000 deaths. Then, about a fifth of deaths came from places outside large metro areas. In the second 100,000 deaths, that share jumped to nearly half.
The largest growth occurred in small towns and rural areas, where the share of deaths nearly tripled. "
IOW, Trump country.
What goes around, comes around.
Bookmarks