I was drawn to this Dec. 9, Washington Post article by Annie Gowin.  Here are several paragraphs:

MITCHELL, S.D. — A cold wind whipped through the prairie as they laid Buck Timmins to rest.

Timmins, a longtime coach and referee, was not the first person in Mitchell, S.D., pop. 15,600, to die of the coronavirus. He was not even the first that week.

As the funeral director tucked blankets over the knees of Timmins’s wife, Nanci, Pastor Rhonda Wellsandt-Zell told the small group of masked mourners that just as there had been seasons in the coach’s life — basketball season, football season, volleyball season — Mitchell was now enduring a phase of its own.

Pandemic season.

In a state where the Republican governor, Kristi L. Noem, has defied calls for a statewide mask mandate even as cases hit record levels, many in this rural community an hour west of Sioux Falls ignored the virus for months, not bothering with masks or social distancing. Restaurants were packed. Big weddings and funerals went on as planned.

Then people started dying.

To read the article in it’s entirety CLICK HERE.

I read the article with difficulty, aware of the emotion of sadness and the emotion of anger suffusing my body.  Also, I felt shame, aware of my self-righteousness at the news of Trump followers predictably falling ill and losing family members due to COVID-19.  I have no doubt, had I been raised in Mitchell, I would think no differently than they.  Context determines what counts as evidence, what counts as reason.  The more rural, the closer the proximity to agriculture and nature, — the less likely one will develop the critical faculties that are needed for survival in a urban context.

The virus is an invisible fragment of life, without pity.  The lethal threat posed by the virus is all the more dangerous because it cannot be seen.  When a community does not believe the virus poses danger, then there is no refuge, no help in what science has to say.  There is little difference between an American living in Mitchell South Dakota, refusing to wear a mask in public, refusing to social distance, and an inhabitant of Europe when the bubonic plague peaked in 1347-1351.  The Black Death initially transmitted by fleas also spread quickly by person to person contact via aerosols. 

Absent science, waiting for an act-of-God is what is left. 

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When the texture of life is grim, dark, unpleasant, there is music to sustain, to get-us-through. 

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?