Opinion from Max McCoy: TOPEKA, United States — In this capital city deep in the American interior, life continues despite a pandemic that has killed 1 of every 500 Kansans. Residents drink at quaint pubs with brews named for long-lost steam locomotives, return in person to college classrooms empty for 18 months and carry on with wedding plans that were once derailed. But just a month ago, the governor of this state took to social media to urge Kansans to get vaccinated against a virus that had filled the capital city’s largest hospital and overwhelmed its emergency department. Medical staff and other front-line workers are suffering the kind of deep fatigue typically seen only in war zones. The enemy is COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that emerged in December 2019. The virus has claimed more than 6,000 victims in this predominantly rural region known for its wheatfields and sunflower patches, a state that most outsiders still associate with the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” Aiding the infection is a populist cultural movement that is skeptical of medical science, prizes the personal freedom to make bad choices and put others at risk, and regards members of the minority party — not the coronavirus — as the real threat. This is flyover country. Most people only get a glimpse of it from 30,000 feet or as a blur through a car windshield while zipping along the interstate at 75 mph. But stop and talk to some of the people here, and you may see the flinty individualism that has been passed down from frontier times. The motto of this state is a Latin phrase that translates, “To the stars through difficulty.” While there has been plenty of difficulty for Kansans in the past year and a half, there have been precious few stars. Read more. |
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