The COVID-19 Crisis in Middle America Reflects A Crisis of Conscience

Reflections on the mitigation efforts in Southeast Missouri and what they teach us about our nation in general.

Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash

There’s been a wildfire raging in middle America, near the great Mississippi River dividing East from West. But it’s not a fire born of wood and brush, but in the form of public health crisis like which we haven’t seen since over 100 years ago. This fire seems to be burning less a year since it started, but the crisis itself has not been resolved.

This last year there has been an ongoing hot zone burning bright, nestled in the St. Francois mountain range at the edge of Ozarks. At the beginning of summer of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic finally shifted its intense focus away from the urban areas of St. Louis to other areas, such as Farmington, Missouri and the surrounding St. Francois County. This occurred just as hundreds of metropolitan areas radiated viral loads outwards to suburban and then rural locales through the United States.

It was increasing swath of red on the COVID-19 maps in the United States back then. Originally this took hold in the large cities on the East and West in early Spring of 2020. But we all saw how the disease had nimbly and efficiently shifted inward into less densely populated and rural areas.

Months ago, it was hard to imagine that the pressure on the health care system would be felt so intensely. It would have been hard to imagine schools precariously balancing the welfare and health of children and educators. There was a feeling of relief when the numbers stayed statically low for months in Middle Anerica. The sense that we had escaped the worse.

In August 2020, the New York Times bestowed Farmington, MO the honor as the 3rd metropolitan area in the United States with the most new cases. This was indicative of the floodgates opening in similar areas across the country.

What’s telling and unique about that shifting public health crisis is how it revealed an even deeper cultural chasm. The conflicting belief systems intersected with the reality of a viral infection. This divide wasn’t just the normal consequences of a particular partisan political season. It’s a complete…