Unhelpful narratives

It bears repeating that COVID-19 has not hit rural areas as hard yet. Yet.

There's a developing narrative that rural areas are safe(r) from the pandemic. It's one of the things driving the "re-open now" protests. "We're not sick, why should we take the economic loss?" It fits into a rural-red/urban-blue dichotomy that's unfortunately quite real and quite strong in many states, especially here in the western US.

It also lines up with an underlying perception about the moral difference between rural and urban areas. This goes back a long, long way. Even before the industrial revolution began to drive massive urbanization, there were lots of cautionary tales about the good small-town boy/girl who goes to the big city and is corrupted and victimized. The mythology of the city has always carried crime, depravity, and the risk of disease along with the bright lights and big opportunities.

More generally, we still perceive illness, to some degree, as the consequence or symptom of moral weakness. This shows up most obviously around mental illness of all kinds, but it's on the edges of discourse about everything from obesity to cancer. At the root, a lot of it is the fear of the uncontrollable: if something bad happens to someone, and you can point to it being because of something they did, you can then reassure yourself "of course, I would never be stupid/greedy/weak/careless enough to..."

The harvest is likely to be dreadful. Someone recently said that rural residents aren't any safer from infection, they just have to drive farther to find it. But then, they also have to drive farther to get supplies, to get to medical care, to help people who may need it. So when it finds them, they will suffer worse for it.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside