thanks TRUMP!....this is what he and his supporting are doing...ā¦.without a thought nor a care in the world
'It's gone haywire': When COVID-19 arrived in rural America
DAWSON, Ga. (AP) ā The reverend approached the makeshift pulpit and asked the Lord to help him make sense of the scene before him: two caskets, side by side, in a small-town cemetery busier now than ever before.
Rev. Willard O. Weston had already eulogized other neighbors lost to COVID-19, and he would do more. But this one stood as a symbol to him of all they had lost. The matching caskets, one powder blue, one white and gold, contained a couple married 30 years who died two days apart, unaware of the otherās fate.
As the worldās attention was fixated on the horrors in Italy and New York City, the per capita death rates in counties in the impoverished southwest corner of Georgia quietly climbed to among the worst in the county. The devastation here is a cautionary tale of what happens when the virus seeps into communities on the losing end of the nationās most intractable inequalities: these counties are rural, mostly African American and poor.
More than a quarter of people in Terrell County live in poverty, the local hospital shuttered decades ago, and businesses have been closing for years, sending many young and able fleeing for cities. Those left behind are sicker and more vulnerable, with more of the underlying health conditions that make coronavirus so deadly.
At least 21 people have died in this county, and dozens more in the neighboring rural communities. Of the 10 counties with the highest death rate per capita in America, half are in rural southwest Georgia.
By nearly every measure, coronavirus patients are
faring worse in rural Georgia than almost anywhere else in America, according to researchers at Emory University in Atlanta. Rural people and African Americans are more likely to work in jobs not conducive to social distancing and have historically less access to health care. Georgia has lost seven rural hospitals in the last decade. Nine counties donāt have a doctor, according to the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals. The same places have higher rates of chronic diseases: In the southwest region of Georgia, 16 percent have diabetes, twice as high as Atlanta
At first, Benjamin Tolbert just felt a malaise; he had no appetite. Within a couple days, he could barely stand. His *******, Desmond, took him to the hospital. Benjaminās wife, Nellie Mae, who everyone called Pollye Ann, got sick the next day.
Everyone in town knew Benjamin, 58, as a hard worker. He had worked for 28 years at a Tyson Foods plant. He and his wife had been together 30 years. He was mild-mannered, but she found a joke in everything. She was a minister, sang gospel and danced, wildly, joyfully. Benjamin would hang back, but Pollye Ann would pull him up and heād dance along with her, said their niece Latasha Taylor.