After big county fair, virus hits hard in rural Mississippi

[dutch777]

1. Sad and tragic delivered to us on the shoulders of stupid

For those who may not know, a 25 bed rural hospital usually is what is termed a Critical Access Hospital. They are meant to be first lines of defense for things like a heart attack, a car or construction accident, the appendicitis. While they have an OR, ER and a small ICU and necessary imaging equipment but they are not a medical defense in depth that a major multi-hundred bed medical center offers. In short, they are capable but fragile as they don't have large numbers of elective surgeries and specialty departments that in a pinch, like a Covid surge, bigger and more robust facilities can shut down "borrow" docs and nurses from. I truly feel for the docs and nurses buried in this.