An ER Doctor in Arkansas Told Us What Its Like to Work in Unvaccinated America
We are going to hand over a big chunk of the weekender here at the shebeen to Friend of the Blog Dr. Ken Starnes. Ken works in emergency medicine down in Winters Bone country on the border between Missouri and Arkansas, and we have checked in with him from time to time for reports on how the pandemic is hitting the people in that particularly tough part of the country. The answer, often, was “very hard.” But now, with the Delta Variant on the loose, the answer for both Arkansas and Missouri now would be “like a freight-train pulling a bulldozer chained to a steamroller.”
According to the CDC, Arkansas’s rate of new cases is up by 35 percent from last week, and 34.8 percent of the state’s population is fully vaccinated. Missouri’s new cases also are up 35 percent from last week and nearly 40 percent are fully vaccinated. If there is an epicenter of this latest outbreak, and if it’s not in this part of the country, it’s close. I’ve been texting back and forth with Dr. Starnes over the last couple of weeks as the new wave of the pandemic builds, and I think I’m going to let him tell you himself what it’s like on the ground there.
Goddammit, none of this had to happen. And it certainly doesn’t have to continue to happen. If you’re making a buck out there off telling people tales about the perils of the vaccines, or if you’re an idiot meat puppet from Fox News bothering the White House with stupid questions, just shut up and sit all your asses down. Get used to the fact that you’re going to hell, every damn one of you.
