Nashville, Des Moines, Amarillo
Remember on Monday Trump shouted that the numbers were coming down all over the country? The hell they are.
At a fraught press briefing on Monday, the president declared: “All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”
Yet county-specific figures show a surge in infection rates in towns and rural communities in red states such as Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota, according to data tracking by the New York Times.
…
In a 7 May report, obtained by NBC News, the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and Central City, Kentucky – a predominantly white town of 6,000 people which saw a 650% week-on-week increase. Muhlenberg county, where Central City is located, has voted Republican in every presidential election since 2004, with Trump winning 72% of votes in 2016 – the biggest ever victory for the party.
Yet he failed to protect them from the virus. Sad.
Many of the new emerging hotspots, both rural and urban, are in states where governors refused to issue stay-at-home orders, or are following Trump’s advice to relax lockdown restrictions despite public health warnings about the dangers of doing so too soon.
Fake news?
Nebraska, too. The town 20 miles north of me is a real hot spot, having the most cases in Nebraska (in spite of being much, much smaller than either Lincoln or Omaha), and the numbers continue to climb. The numbers in my town continue to climb. Lincoln had started to flatten, but then started to climb again, even though the governor hadn’t even reopened that county (he did reopen Omaha; I haven’t heard of any increase in cases there, but I haven’t followed them as closely).
In my town, restaurants are opening on Monday. We apparently don’t want to flatten the curve, we want to overtake Grand Island. And yes, this town voted for Trump in a big way (though I was happy to note in our primary yesterday that our idiotic City Council member lost in a primary challenge – 6 challengers – to the two best candidates, so maybe we aren’t totally gone, but then, our ward is the one that always elects liberals; this guy was an aberration).
Wow, I used to live in Garden City. I can’t imagine anyplace I’ve lived that I’d rather not be right now.
iknklast – is the high count meatpacking-related?
Yes, although the first outbreak was tied to a birthday party. But with meat-packing plants, we saw it really jump.