Deadliest place in America: They shrugged off the pandemic, then their family and friends started dying
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...s-rural-republican-leaning-county/3828902001/
Sitting in the front seat of a red pickup as wind-whipped sorghum husks fly down Main Street like snowflakes, Ivy Charles fingers the white surgical mask slipped down beneath her chin.
"He was a puzzle piece who can never be replaced," she says, tears welling into her tired eyes. "He was supposed to get better. We weren't expecting him to die."
Just over a month ago, the
now-rampaging coronavirus pandemic tore through this rural town of 1,000 and surrounding
Gove County, killing 20 residents. Among them was Charles' father,
Edward "Mac" McElhaney, 78.
Here, where most everyone knows most everyone else, the pandemic has killed farmers and their wives. The town's unofficial historian.
The beloved grandmother whose sour cream chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting was always the talk of the party. The mom whose piano-playing still echoes in the heads of her friends.
And it has drained the hearts of the survivors. Those who feel guilty that they recovered. The ambulance workers battling to treat their own relatives. The exhausted doctor who watched nearly half his patients die.
"It was overwhelming and sad and you don't think you have that many tears to shed," says Charles, 46. "And you do."
As of Thursday,
coronavirus has killed a higher percentage of Gove County residents than any other county in the United States: One out of every 132 people has died.
Their intertwined stories illuminate the toll the pandemic has taken on communities across the country as emotional debates over how to control the infection have unfolded amid mounting losses.
Even today, mask-wearing remains controversial in Gove County, and friendships are being strained as authorities struggle to persuade their neighbors to follow basic public health guidelines, such as avoiding large gatherings.
President Donald Trump won the county with 88% of the vote in November, and many of the residents, including the farmers who raise up corn and sorghum, are deeply skeptical of government and public health orders, often echoing the language Trump has used about mask-wearing and the pandemic's severity.
Conservative churches like the Dunkard Brethren — a Protestant faith brought over from Germany — help shape social life, and the Dollar General store is the biggest retailer for 50 miles in any direction. Quinter, the largest town, is 300 windswept miles west of Kansas City, and the paved streets surrounding it quickly give way to dirt roads.
Many young people move away when they can. Gove County's median age is nearly 50 years old, a decade older than the national average. Among the 2,600 residents, coronavirus found easy targets, especially once it worked its way into the nursing home.
In August, just before the wave of positive cases began growing, Gove County leaders mandated everyone wear masks in public. They were forced to remove it two weeks later after a series of angry confrontations with their constituents. Around the same time, someone anonymously reported the county's COVID-19 information Facebook page as spam or fake news, and it was temporarily taken offline just as public officials were trying to warn residents of the danger.
The first two deaths were reported on Oct. 7, setting off a wave of concern among public health officials and county managers. By Oct. 13, seven people had died, six of them inside the nursing home.
Some community leaders remain concerned their neighbors still aren't taking the pandemic seriously.
"We are living through history right now, and I worry what the history books will say about us," says Ericka Nicholson, 47, who helps run the town's volunteer ambulance service and survived the infection.
Nicholson, 47, doesn't want to be seen as criticizing her neighbors, but she's often been the last familiar face the nursing home residents saw as she wheeled them, dying, into a strange hospital 50 miles from home.
"We have to honor these people who passed so there is a story to tell about us in 50 years," she says. "The people who died in our long-term care facility, they are our identity. They are why we are here. And they are dying."
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