
‘It’s gone haywire’: When Covid-19 arrived in rural America - rmason
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/06/vulnerable-rural-america-coronavirus-pandemic/111668024/
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oehtXRwMkIs
Trying to convince medical students to practice in rural/underserved
communities by trying to appeal to altruism is clearly not working when many
of them may be half a million dollars in debt. It's such a big problem but it
seems like there are no easy solutions in sight. Even debt relief programs are
clearly not enough. Or perhaps there just aren't enough doctors to begin with.

~~~
kmonsen
Why should we convince them on altruism and not by paying them more? I thought
USA was all about the market deciding where resources should go?

~~~
lonelappde
Because rural life is fundamentally economically inefficient, so they can't
pay more. Transportation and overhead is too expensive. It only works if its
subsidized by altruism of the urban economy, or a huge portion of locals learn
the skills for themselves.

~~~
_bxg1
The way I see it is, a rural economy has to be propped up by at least one
"export" of some kind. This usually isn't informational; the information
economy gravitates toward urban centers. Whether or not the information
economy has to stay in urban centers is unclear, but it seems to be the case
right now.

Traditionally that export has been mining, manufacturing, and/or farming.
Things that require lots of cheap space and labor and not much else. The first
two have taken deep dives in the past few decades. This makes rural life, in
many places, simply uneconomical. Without something bringing money into the
town, people don't have money to spend on local services. Healthcare is an
expensive local service. If we leave it up to the market, the answer is often
simply "don't live in a rural area". I'm not saying we _should_ just leave it
up to the market, though many would, but I think these are the base facts.

Edit: I hadn't actually read the article yet and I hope the above doesn't come
off as insensitive in relation to the OP's tone. But I still think it's the
truth. Rural America right now is the most broken part of our country's broken
system. Something fundamental has to change.

~~~
lasagnaphil
The crux of the rural decay problem is that we've left it up to the _global_
free market, and China/India/other developing countries have sucked up all the
manufacturing jobs (national labor cannot realistically compete with Chinese
labor).

~~~
_bxg1
Sure, but that's still the free market. Free-market purists (many of whom
_live_ in rural areas) have to realize that this is what comes from taking a
hardline stance against government action when it comes to the economy. Stuff
just shifts to maximize efficiency, with no regard to the lives that break in
the process. This is the unregulated force that they so blindly worship.

~~~
jjeaff
Many conservative people in rural areas are not pure free market people. Hence
the wide support for Trump. He's a populist and nationalist. Ask anyone in
rural America and I guarantee you will be hard-pressed to find anyone that
thinks the US should do nothing to stop jobs and production from moving
overseas because they believe in the free market.

~~~
_bxg1
I'm more pointing out that when they talk about that sort of thing, they're
often being hypocritical after using "small government" and "free market"
arguments five minutes before to denounce everything from social services, to
capital gains taxes, to environmental regulation. There's a deep-cutting
double-standard. I'd have more respect for it if they just admitted to self-
interest, instead of preaching against deregulation except when it negatively
impacts them.

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mark_l_watson
We are just getting started in dealing with covid-19 health and economic
issues.

There are no quick fixes and we need to hope that almost everyone does the
right thing (wearing masks, social distancing, keep shopping at local
businesses) because we can’t really get the economy going until almost
everyone gets on board.

~~~
LastZactionHero
Whoa, you have local businesses?

Our leaders have deemed that even curbside pickup is far too dangerous, so
Amazon is the only shop in town.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Here in the Midwest, everything except 1) franchise stores and 2) single-
proprietor stores have gone to curbside pickup. They invented a whole pickup
process at our grocery store, with shipping containers in the parking lot
containing staged carts with numbers, masked-and-gloved young people filling
and shuttling carts to the container. They text you when your cart is ready.
Drive over and park in a numbered space and reply with your space number.
Somebody comes out of the container with your cart and you pop your trunk.

Cars coming and going all day. Works well for everybody (with a car).

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kumarvvr
Just today morning, I saw an article in NYT about how US should not be happy
that it's COVID numbers are tapering.

They show the total numbers split between NY city and whole of US, and it
clearly shows that apart from NY, Boston and a couple of other cities, there
is a rapid growth in cases across the country.

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NotSammyHagar
That's a devastating story.

