Despite surge in delta infections, many Missouri residents still downplay the threat

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Fri, 2021-07-16 18:54 — mike kraft

The delta variant is ravaging this Missouri city. Many residents are still wary of vaccines. Experts fear Springfield, Mo., is a harbinger of tensions to come as people refuse to get vaccinated and downplay the pandemic even in the face of overwhelmed hospitals and preventable death. Fenit Nirappil Washington Post

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — The worst of the pandemic seemed behind Mercy Hospital, those weeks last winter when the coronavirus wards were full of people struggling to breathe.

But after months of reprieve, the virus has come roaring back, sending unvaccinated young adults and middle-aged patients from across southwest Missouri there in droves as the highly transmissible delta variant tears through the region. The hospital has been treating more than 130 covid-19 patients each day since Sunday — more than the winter surge — and had to open a sixth ward. It came close to running out of ventilators earlier this month.

“We’re just very disheartened. This was all pretty avoidable,” said Wanda Brown, a nurse unit manager. “Last year, we were looking forward to the vaccine coming out because we really thought that that was going to be helpful for our community. We feel like we’ve taken giant leaps backward.”

Springfield, a city of 170,000 nestled in the Ozarks, has become a cautionary tale for how the more transmissible delta variant, now estimated to account for half of all new cases nationwide, can ravage poorly vaccinated communities and return them to the darkest days of the pandemic. ...

Missouri has reported one of the nation’s highest per capita increases in new coronavirus cases in recent weeks. Freeman Health System in Joplin, about 70 miles west of Springfield, announced the full reopening of its covid-19 ward in late June after downsizing in the spring because of a lack of patients.

The delta variant has been linked to a broader regional outbreak spilling into Arkansas and Oklahoma, as well as emerging hot spots in Louisiana, Florida, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Cases and hospitalizations are strongly correlated with low vaccination rates, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Fully vaccinated people retain significant protection against delta, research finds

Experts fear that the surge in Springfield, known as the birthplace of Bass Pro Shops and Andy’s Frozen Custard, is a harbinger of tensions to come as people play down the pandemic and refuse to get vaccinated even in the face of overwhelmed hospitals and preventable death. Instead of unifying the community, the surge has hardened divisions, unleashing anger from health-care workers fed up with vaccine misinformation and exposing deep antipathy toward the public health establishment. ...

Doctors and nurses are fighting to overcome the perception that young adults do not need to worry about contracting the virus when they see evidence to the contrary every day.

“I’m seeing some people in their 30s and 40s that don’t have underlying health conditions, and they are very ill with this,” said Howard Jarvis, the emergency room medical director at CoxHealth South. “And sometimes they’re not so ill that they have to be admitted. They may be back in three or five days and do need to be admitted.” ...

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