Greetings from Lyon County, Minnesota… Google it if you want, but it’s the county in southwest Minnesota that’s two counties north of Iowa and one county east of South Dakota. To better position us on your mental map, we’re 60 miles northwest of Sioux Falls and 150 miles west of Minneapolis. And while we’re 30 miles from the nearest Interstate and have barely a few miles of four lane, we have a state university and Schwan Foods which create enough traffic to necessitate a few stoplights. And all this rural isolation may explain why we’re in a cluster of counties which this latest Minnesota Department of Health report shows has yet to have a single known Coronavirus case.
Maybe all this rural isolation ain’t such a bad thing? Unlike the Trump worshipers out here, I know the pandemic is coming, it’s just waiting for some travelers to bring it here from the metro areas that already have dozens and hundreds of cases. That slow pace of virus spread is buying us valuable time to prepare for the peak. Which makes one wonder… What if we could become even more isolated and slow the virus even more?
Now their are simplistic ways to do that like blocking entry points, but our big airport that has a paved runway sees pretty much only Schwan’s executive air shuttle to Minneapolis and a puddle jumper cargo plane or three daily, and we don’t have any highway bridges over big rivers to block. With blockade’s outa the question, how do we motivate folks to stay home and not go to the metro areas and get infected?
Our biggest city, Marshall, has a population of around 13,000 and the aforementioned university, Schwan’s, a smaller packing plant, ethanol plant, Walmart, Hy-Vee grocery, a couple car dealers, even more tractor dealers, and the Courthouse with a 40 odd bed jail. It’s the regional trade center for Lyon County and the adjoining less populous counties which are dotted with smaller towns of a few dozen to a few thousand population.
So why would anyone want to leave Lyon and adjoining counties, and how do we persuade them to stay home and virus free? Let’s look at the major sources of travel out of the area to get some ideas- Those food processing plants fill a tractor-trailer rig every few minutes and the drivers are put at risk as they deliver all over the country. We need to let the railroads take over the long hauls and have the shippers and receivers load and unload the trucks while the drivers relax in the safety of their trucks. Avera Health, by their own admission a catholic “religious mission” that dabbles in medicine and seems quite willing to bankrupt themselves buying up hospitals that have never performed an abortion to keep it that way, owns the 100+ bed Marshall hospital and a bunch of 20 odd bed smaller town hospitals in the area. A hundred beds is about the size where a hospital becomes efficient, but Avera prefers to use it’s hospital near monopoly to suck patients to it’s much bigger hospital in Sioux Falls. The Lutheran hospital chain that sold it’s naming rights to billionaire Denny Sanford has a smaller market share but uses the same suck ‘em to Sioux Falls strategy, With South Dakota’s weak public health infrastructure Sioux Falls is a Coronavirus petri dish, and offering more health care services in Marshall and Lyon County will keep our most vulnerable citizens out of there. Then there’s shopping- There’s actually at least one grocery chain here that buys up small town grocery stores in towns miles away from Walmart and jacks the prices to ‘hood store levels. The Hy-Vee ain’t cheap, and Walmart prices just under them= If you want reasonably priced food, you make a Costco run the 90 miles to Sioux Falls or the 130 miles to Minneapolis’ southwest suburbs. We need to end this price gouging so we can shop local and safe.
That’s my ideas, how do you think we can slow the spread of Coronavirus in the short run and strengthen our local rural economies in the long run?