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NEW YORK – «The most tragic thing is watch them die in disbelief: They keep saying that the coronavirus does not exist even though it is killing them. His last words are sometimes: tell me the truth, what disease do I have?“The outburst of Jodi Doering, a South Dakota hospital nurse, hits the screens of television networks after going viral on social media. But similar stories, of disbelief and, at times, even hostility towards health personnel (“take off that diving suit: I am not contagious, Covid does not exist”), Now doctors and paramedics across America tell them. Or rather, in all parts of the areas now most affected by the epidemic, those that until yesterday seemed less vulnerable: the interior states, the least populated.
We have known for a long time: The United States, torn by conflict over everything, has also been divided by the coronavirus. In this case, however, the different sensitivity about the dangers of Covid-19 is linked, in addition to political and ideological factors, also to the evolution of an epidemic that initially affected New York and other metropolises with a Democratic majority like Houston and Los Angeles, while the summer boom has hit the states of Sun belt, from Arizona to Florida. Much of republican America, rural and small-town America, MidwestThe “deep south”, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, had been marginally affected by the virus, apart from isolated outbreaks like some slaughterhouses. This has made citizens of large areas of the country less sensitive to the risks of the virus., more concerned about the economic consequences of the pandemic than about the disease itself: a disease that had not affected their families or those of friends and relatives.
The increase in recent weeks radically changes this “geography of alarm”: the multiplication of infections and also of severe cases, those requiring hospitalization, brings many hospitals to the brink of collapse and rural communities are paying the highest price. In America, the epidemic gallops at the rate of 150,000 infected and about a thousand deaths a day. and this time, in relation to population, rural areas and cities with less than 250,000 inhabitants are those with a number of patients (60 per 100,000 inhabitants) almost double compared to the 35 infected in large urban centers.
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And it is only a partial picture because in some parts of the country health controls are almost non-existent, as evidenced by the fact that In states like the two Dakotas, one out of every two patients tested is positive, while in other regions we are still above 25%. It was necessary to intervene first, but Only now are Republican governors who previously rejected measures such as the masks obligation running to hide: occurs in Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia. The “tough” Doug Burgum also changes course in North Dakota: “Things have changed, we must change too.”
Late thoughts: America, which has so far considered it a manly gesture to reject the mask, is sinking, from El Paso in Texas to the plains of North and South Dakota, through Wyoming and Iowa, in an emergency that quickly turns into drama because these regions have few hospitals and are also not equipped to deal with epidemics. And they also suffer from staff shortages that push distressed institutions to get coronavirus-positive doctors and nurses back to work, while other clinical centers that now collapse warn that, if infections continue to grow, they will have to ration medical care: that is abandon the most serious patients to their fate.
While infamous refrigerated trucks are making a comeback in many counties Accustomed to piling up corpses that the crowded mortuary rooms of hospitals cannot dispose of, the authorities are trying to absorb the wave of hospitalizations by transferring the most serious patients to hospitals in large cities, better equipped and with greater capacity. But now many metropolises are also “exhausted” and medical personnel are exhausted. Many doctors and nurses don’t feel like living another hell like last winter: they retire early or even change jobs.
November 17, 2020 (change November 18, 2020 | 08:36)
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