Rural areas in Missouri and Kansas send their sickest patients to cities, straining hospitals

[TexasTowelie]

Registered nurse Pascaline Muhindura has spent the past eight months treating COVID patients at Research Medical Center in Kansas City.

But when she returns home to her small town of Spring Hill, Kansas, she’s often stunned by what she sees, like on a recent stop for carryout food.

“No one in the entire restaurant was wearing a mask,” Muhindura said. “And there’s no social distancing. I had to get out, because I almost had a panic attack. I was like, ‘What is going on with people? Why are we still doing this?’”

Many rural communities across the U.S. have resisted masks and calls for social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, but now rural counties are experiencing record-high infection and death rates.

Read more: https://missouriindependent.com/2020/11/25/rural-areas-in-missouri-and-kansas-send-their-sickest-patients-to-cities-straining-hospitals/

[rustysgurl]

1. Rural KS and MO are going to be the death of the cities

Miami County is just south of us in Johnson County, and while JoCo County Commissioners pretty much listened to science, Miami County did not do the same. Spring Hill sits on the border between Johnson and Miami counties, but the people there think very much as rural Kansans do (i.e., don't tell us what to do). It's my belief that people from Spring Hill, Paola and the surrounding rural areas routinely come into Johnson County and the Kansas City Metro area, spreading COVID far and wide. They eat in our restaurants and shop at our Costcos, Walmarts and the big grocery stores they don't have there. I'm sure some of them are asymptomatic carriers, and thus the virus spreads.

I can imagine it would drive a health professional nuts.