Pandemic roundup: Rural hospitals in low-vaccination areas are filling up; doctor-patient talks become more urgent

Vaccination rates as of Aug. 26, compared to the national average, adjusted to account for vaccinations not assigned to specific counties. Map by The Daily Yonder; click on the image to enlarge it, or click here for the interactive version.

Here's a roundup of recent news about the pandemic and immunization efforts:

Nearly 300,000 rural Americans completed their coronavirus vaccinations last week, the largest single-week gain since mid-July, The Daily Yonder reports. New weekly rural vaccinations have climbed by more than two-thirds in the past three weeks, indicating that concerns about the Delta variant are driving up vaccination rates. Read more here.

In Alabama, where rates are low and Covid-19 patients are filling hospital beds statewide, rural doctors' efforts to persuade patients to get vaccinated assume even greater importance. Read more here.

Some vaccine skeptics have claimed that many doctors secretly oppose coronavirus vaccinations. So a health journalist spoke to more than 200 health care providers, epidemiologists, and public-health officials from all over America and offered them anonymity so they could speak freely. All 203 of them supported coronavirus vaccination. Read more here.

Rural hospitals, pushed to the limits by the Delta variant surge, face delays in providing treatment and doing surgeries. The article is about Oregon, but it's happening across the country. Read more here.

Many rural hospitals and morgues in low-vaccination areas of rural California are filled past capacity. Read more here.

A rural Kansas man is one of many patients nationwide who have died waiting for an intensive-care bed because of the surge in Covid-19 patients. Rob Van Pelt, 44, went into cardiac arrest while under light sedation for a routine procedure. He was stabilized and flown to the nearest emergency hospital with a cardiac team. He died after three days, still waiting for a bed. Read more here.

A similar case: a Purple Heart combat veteran from rural Texas died from gallstone pancreatitis because his small local hospital couldn't find an ICU bed at a larger hospital for him. Read more here.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said people in his state tend to be less worried about the pandemic because they're Christians who believe in eternal life. Read more here.

An unvaccinated rural pastor who almost died from Covid-19 now preaches about the importance of getting vaccinated. Danny Reeves of Corsicana, Texas, says he's not anti-vaccine, and had encouraged vulnerable people to get vaccinated, but because he's in his 40s and generally healthy, he thought it wouldn't be a big deal if he got infected. "In that I was deeply, deeply wrong," Reeves told NPR. "I was falsely and erroneously overconfident." Read more here.

A religion researcher who grew up in rural Texas discusses the role politics and evangelical Christianity can play in vaccine refusal. Read more here.

When Covid deaths are dismissed or stigmatized, grief is mixed with shame and anger. Read more here.

A new study shows that more than a quarter of small businesses require employees to get vaccinated and wear masks, and about the same percentage require customers to wear masks. Small businesses make up the majority of jobs in rural America. Some rural small-business owners can face backlash over masking requirements. Read more here.

An anti-mask organizer in Texas has died from Covid-19. Read more here.

The Delta variant surge in Florida serves as a cautionary tale, showing that—even in states that have prioritized vaccination—the pandemic can run rampant when other measures are not implemented, such as mask mandates, social distancing, and school and/or business shutdowns. Read more here.

Covid has shut down a Texas oil town 100 miles from the nearest intensive-care beds. Read more here.

Fact check: Widely shared social media posts that claim Dr. Anthony Fauci said in 2005 that hydroxychloroquine could effectively treat novel coronavirus infections are false. Read more here.

Covid-19 cases are rising in nursing homes across the nation. Read more here.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that American opinions about pandemic restrictions are largely split along political lines—more so than in any other country surveyed. Read more here.

Many vaccine holdouts said they'd be more likely to get vaccinated if the Food and Drug Administration approved it. But now that the Pfizer vaccine has been FDA approved, many people are moving the goalposts rather than get vaccinated. That demonstrates the necessity of vaccine mandates, said one infectious-disease expert. Read more here.

Vaccines prevented fewer infections as the Delta variant surged, but they remained effective at keeping people out of hospitals, researchers have found. Read more here.

Conspiracy theorists falsely claim that the FDA didn't really fully authorize the Pfizer vaccine. Essentially, they say that the Pfizer vaccine that has been in use for months isn't the same as the Pfizer vaccine that will be marketed under the name Comirnaty (not true; they're identical), and that the FDA has engaged in a bait-and-switch: the agency fully approved Comirnaty, they say, but only extended the emergency-use authorization for the vaccine that has been in use for months. They suggest that full authorization was simply a pretext for mandating the emergency-use version (again, they're the same vaccine), and others have wrongly claimed that a "real" full authorization would automatically void the emergency-use authorization of the vaccine that has been in use. Read more here.

Half of hospitalized Covid patients had lingering symptoms one year later, a recent study has found. Read more here.