Written By-@pistolwhippedya
At the start of the pandemic, the first batch of COVID-19 slammed some of America’s largest urban areas. As a result, Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City were hotspots for the virus, with hundreds to thousands of confirmed cases. As of recently, COVID-19’s wrath has started to spread into rural areas. Areas that, according to TheHill.com, have a substantial Trump Support population.
At the rise of the pandemic, Trump “downplayed” the virus, claiming it to be a democratic plot against him. Fox News hosts helped publicly push the president’s “hoax” theory. It may be that conservative rural Trump supporters have irreversibly adopted the perspective that COVID-19 is “fake news” and that it poses no real threat. As the virus spreads into the Southern states of Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama and the Midwest states of Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, this perspective can have negative consequences.
Experts far predicted that COVID-19 would slowly enter rural areas. Up until late March, 80% of COVID-19 cases were in large urban cores, according to news analyst William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution. Unlike large cities, “rural areas do not have higher population density, high connectivity, or connection to international airports,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. Rural areas can use their built-in defenses to hold back the threat. However, it eventually diffuses into those areas because even though they are not very connected, they are still connected, which means the virus will spread.
Now more than half of the counties showing signs of rapid growth are outside of metro areas.
One concern is that the slow rise of COVID-19 in small areas will show evidence of Trump’s first discernment of the virus and the fact that these rural areas have already sheltered in place. Residents of “red states” have protested for their liberties and demanded that the economy reopen when in actuality, COVID-19 may just be starting or not there yet.
According to TheHill.com, “once the virus arrives in rural areas, the demographics of America’s smaller towns mean it will likely put millions of lives in jeopardy. Rural Americans are older, more prone to underlying conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, and more likely to smoke — all risk factors that heighten one’s vulnerability to the worst symptoms of COVID-19.” These communities are less likely to have the resources to control the surge of the virus.
If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it should be that it is a common threat, unbiased of any demographic factor. When we accept that it is a universal issue, instead of a political or who is right, we can develop a global strategy that gives all an equal chance to survive.
