The rural plague

Red America’s infuriating vaccine refusal is making America's culture chasm even wider

A rural area.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

COVID-19 in the United States is quickly becoming a rural plague, and the surge that is ripping through hundreds of small communities around the country is a sad and inevitable consequence of our national political predicament. While it's tempting to shrug off people condemning themselves to preventable deaths or long stints in the hospital, the self-destructive vaccine refusal of America's Trumpiest regions will eventually touch all of us, prolonging the pandemic and leading to suffering and tragedy even among the vaccinated.

That America's COVID crisis is once again on the rise is no longer in dispute. Nationally, the 7-day average of daily cases is up 140 percent over the past two weeks, with nearly 80,000 new cases reported on Friday alone. Over that same time period, hospitalizations and deaths have each increased by more than 30 percent.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.