It is often hard to fathom why so many people act as if there is no pandemic ravaging the country.
Why is it that in a state like South Dakota or Iowa or Nebraska, where the virus is spreading like a prairie fire, that people refuse to wear masks and appear fatalistic about the whole thing?
And why is it that so many just don't believe any of it.
It’s not that people in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa and elsewhere don’t realize their states are leading the nation in new cases per capita. It’s that many of them aren’t especially concerned.
Wayne County, home to 6,400 people in southern Iowa, has the state’s second-highest case rate, yet its public health administrator, Shelley Bickel, says mask-wearing is rare. She finds it particularly appalling when she sees older people, who are at high risk, shopping at a grocery store without one.
“I just want to get on the speaker and say, ‘Why don’t you have your mask on?’ It’s just amazing,” Bickel said.
Jenna Lovaas, public health director of Jones County, Iowa, said even now that her rural county has the state’s highest virus rate, people have opted not to make any changes, such as protecting themselves and others by wearing masks.
“They don’t think it’s real,” she said. “They don’t think it’s going to be that bad or they just don’t want to wear a mask because we’ve made it a whole political thing at this point.”
In South Dakota, an ER nurse offers this gripping account on Twitter of COVID patients refusing to believe the coronavirus is anything other than a hoax.