A Doctor’s Warning From the Rural South
Small community hospitals already operate on the very edge of disaster every day.
Life in the rural South is tied closely to nature. Live here long enough and you can tell that a storm is rising by the way the leaves roll in the wind. A strange silence can precede bad weather, as the birds shelter on the ground and the air pressure changes throughout the house. In my part of rural South Carolina, we are experiencing a new kind of silence: a kind of breath-holding, sky-watching, prayer-whispering pause as we wait for COVID-19 to arrive in earnest. My county has 15 official cases so far.
I see the news reports and shudder. If
