Rural health-care workers are less likely to get coronavirus vaccinations; more employers could impose mandates

Health-care worker vaccination rate by residence type; Covid States Project graph; click on the image to enlarge it.

Rural health-care workers are less opposed to the coronavirus vaccine than they were a few months ago, but they're still less likely than their suburban and urban peers to be fully vaccinated, according to a new study from The Covid States Project.

Health-care workers across the board are more likely to be vaccinated than the general public, but rural workers are less likely than their suburban and urban peers. Only 63 percent of rural health-care workers are vaccinated, compared to 74% of suburban and 75% of urban health-care workers, the study found.

Vaccine resistance among rural health-care workers is at 25%, down from 32% in March. Health-care workers in all of the most vaccine-resistant demographics became more receptive to the vaccine between March and June, including rural, Republican, female, non-college-educated, White, Black, and those that make under $25,000 in a year.

Health-care worker vaccine preferences by rurality. Covid States Project graph; click the image to enlarge it.

But, though vaccine resistance has decreased in recent months, it's still a significant issue among health-care workers. "These numbers showing that healthcare workers are 27% unvaccinated and 15% vaccine resistant suggest that, absent mandates, most of the currently unvaccinated healthcare workers will remain unvaccinated, potentially fueling outbreaks in healthcare facilities," the researchers write. "Given the current surge of cases due to the Delta variant, this will continue to put pressure on health care providers to mandate vaccination for their staff."

The Covid States Project is a joint effort of Harvard, Northeastern, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities. It receives support from the National Science Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and Amazon.

News consumers, bummed and burned, tune out; get them back with journalism that offers solutions to problems

With so much depressing news these days, it's little surprise that many people avoid the news altogether. "Almost a third of people surveyed worldwide for the Reuters Digital News Report said they 'often or sometimes' avoid the news," Christine Schmidt reports for Harvard University's Nieman Lab. "The leading cause for Americans avoiding news in 2017 was 'It can have a negative effect on my mood' (57%) and 'I can’t rely on news to be true' (35%). Basically, we are bumming — and burning — people out."

Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton recently shared quotes from Americans on why they avoid news and said it's clear that, when journalists write about big problems, they should also present potential solutions. 

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin's Center for Media Engagement analyzed how solutions journalism can best do this. They recommend including five specific elements in such articles:

• Problem: The causes and symptoms of the issue
• Solution: The replicable ideas tied to solving the problem
• Implementation: The how-to details of putting the solution into action
• Results: The progress, data-based or anecdotal, that has been made in working toward a solution
• Insights: The teachable, big-picture lessons that can be learned beyond one particular solution or situation

News media roundup: NNA creates training program to help community newspapers use Postal Service more effectively

Max Heath

The National Newspaper Association Foundation has created the Max Heath Postal Institute to train newspapers and printers for best uses of the mail in a rapidly changing postal environment. It recognizes the work of Max Heath, who died in July and was an expert on newspapers and the mail. Its first program is set for Oct. 21 with a U.S. Postal Service presentation, “Liberating your Newspaper from Costly Address Change Notices.” NNAF has a donation link for those who want to support the institute.

After cutting print days, the locally owned Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass., is buying a new printing press. Read more here.

New inductees to the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame include media executive Lloyd Ballagen and former small-town newspaper owner Joel Klaassen. Ballagen, who died in 2020, was the CEO and board chairman of Hutchinson, Kansas-based Harris Enterprises, which operated a dozen newspapers and 13 radio stations in seven states. Klaassen is the former owner of the Hillsboro Free Press. The inductees will be honored in an Oct. 9 ceremony. Read more here.

"After selling the Helena World in 2019, The Pine Bluff Commercial in 2020 and the Hot Springs Village Voice this year, The Gannett Co. has sold its longest-held Arkansas newspaper, the Baxter Bulletin of Mountain Home," Kyle Massey reports for Arkansas Business.

The American Press Institute surveyed news publishers on how they retain subscribers. Here are some of their proven tactics. Read more here.

If you know someone who's taking, or thinking about taking, horse dewormer for Covid-19, pass this along to them

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Demand is surging nationwide for ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug typically used for livestock, based on unsubstantiated claims that it can help Covid-19 patients. How bad is it? A Las Vegas-area feed store is requiring customers to show a picture of themselves with their horse before they can buy it, and the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health have warned against using it to treat Covid-19.

This didn't start with ivermectin. It's largely a function of trust, or lack of it: in government, in science, and in the "elites" believed to control both. When Donald Trump, whom supporters saw as an outsider, cast doubt on top scientists from the beginning of the pandemic, it set the stage for supporters to doubt them when vaccines were released. Trump also advocated for untested Covid therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine and publicly floated the notion of injecting disinfectants into the body to "clean" the lungs. Some followers listened; hydroxychloroquine prescriptions shot up 900% in 2020, leading to shortages for patients with autoimmune disease. And the day after Trump retweeted a viral video from America's Frontline Doctors claiming hydroxychloroquine cured Covid-19, poison-control centers in many states saw a significant rise in calls from people who had ingested bleach, Lysol and other household cleaners.

Part of the appeal of HCQ and ivermectin is that both drugs have already been FDA-approved and have been long in use to fight other human diseases. Ivermectin is used to treat parasites in animals and humans, but has a long history of being promoted as a panacea for everything from AIDS to autism. Last summer it became popular in Latin America and India for Covid treatment, mostly because doctors didn't have access to a vaccine and believed an experimental treatment was better than nothing.

But the science is inconclusive at best, and leading scientific bodies have said so. The studies ivermectin fans often cite are either far too limited in scale to draw conclusions (which the studies' authors acknowledged), or say ivermectin only shows a therapeutic effect at toxic doses, or are ethically suspect. One study was yanked from a peer-reviewed journal almost immediately because the paper contained unsubstantiated claims and promoted the authors' own ivermectin treatment.

In some cases, courts have forced hospitals to allow Covid-19 patients receive ivermectin. Why not just let them take it? It's not necessarily safe, for one thing: Some people are experiencing violent diarrhea and other side effects from taking it, especially those using the over-the-counter version meant for animals. And putting one's faith in ivermectin may dissuade people from seeking other experimental but approved treatments for Covid-19, such as monoclonal antibodies.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent of The Washington Post explains "How right-wing media and social isolation lead people to eat horse paste," which tastes awful.

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.

Pandemic roundup on children and parents: Concerns are greater in rural areas; religion and politics are factors

Chart by The Covid States Project; click the image to enlarge it or here for the original version.

Here's a roundup of pandemic news related to parents, kids and schools:

Rural parents are more concerned about coronavirus vaccinations than their suburban and urban peers, according to a recent survey from The Covid States Project, a joint effort of Harvard, Northeastern, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities. The study found that rural parents shared the same concerns as parents in cities and suburbs, but to greater degrees. They were 10 percentage points more likely than urban parents to say they were concerned that the vaccines have been tested enough (58% to 48%), nine points more likely to wonder whether the vaccines actually work (51% vs. 42%) and what long-term health effects they might cause (56% vs. 47%), and eight points more likely say they were concerned about how new the vaccine is (52% to 44%).

A rural Eastern Kentucky couple's worries about coronavirus vaccination help illustrate the Covid States Project's findings. Josh Stacy told Brandon Roberts of Spectrum News that government mistrust is a big reason he doesn't want the vaccination for himself, his wife Tomi, or their two daughters, ages 13 and 5. He also cited his Christian beliefs, saying that he doesn't think the vaccination itself is the Mark of the Beast, but believes it "can lead to that." He believes the virus is man-made and believes the government and elites want to use it as population control, and says his doubts about the vaccine have intensified as he's watched his fully vaccinated mother and stepfather battle Covid-19.

Governors in several states have barred schools from enacting mask mandates; as kids head back to school, many parents in those states—including some in rural areas—are protesting, filing suit, and signing petitions in an effort to allow schools control over their own masking policies. Read more here.

16- and 17-year-olds are the age group with the highest rate of new coronavirus infections, according to the CDC. Read more here.

Several rural Kentucky school districts have shut down because of spiking Covid-19 cases, but students won't be able to learn at home much because the state legislature recently passed a law limiting remote learning. Superintendents say they're worried the kids will have to make up the days over spring break and in summer. Read more here.

Children's hospitals around the country are seeing a surge in Covid-19 patients. Read more here.

No coronavirus vaccine has been approved for kids under age 12. This article explains the various regulatory and logistical hurdles that will need to be cleared before that happens. Read more here.

Here's an illustration of how infectious the Delta variant is, and how important it is for all parties to wear masks: A California elementary school teacher who didn't know she was infected took off her mask during story time. Though the desks were distanced from each other and masks were required indoors, half of her class tested positive in the next week—nearly all of them in the two rows closest to her desk. Read more here.

"Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools, an amount that is more than four times what the U.S. Education Department spends on K-12 schools in a typical year," Bryan Anderson reports for The Associated Press and Report for America. That includes about $155 billion sent to states to distribute among schools. Some rural schools are using the money to beef up their tech capabilities so students will be better able to learn at home during pandemic shutdowns. Read more here.

Extreme weather roundup: Drought drives up feed prices, pinching cattle farmers; heat endangers farmworkers

Here's a roundup of extreme weather across the nation, from hurricanes to wildfires, droughts, and extreme heat:

Drought is crushing ranchers in North Dakota. Farmers can't grow enough feed, so they're selling off their cattle before the animals starve. Read more here.

Hundreds of farmworkers across the U.S. have died from heat over the past few decades, but there are no federal rules protecting them. Read more here.

U.S. dairy farms grapple with high feed prices amid the drought. Read more here.

Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast, causing widespread power outages and some rural hospitals to evacuate their critical patients to large hospitals—a difficult task when most large hospitals in the region are already overcrowded with Covid-19 patients. Read more here.

For households displaced by floods in New York state, the rural housing shortage poses problems. Read more here.

All residents on the California side of southern Lake Tahoe are ordered to evacuate as a huge wildfire approaches. Read more here.

Wildfire smoke has clouded summers for kids who are breathing in wildfire smoke, sometimes from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Read more here.

For residents of Paradise, Calif., the still-raging Dixie Fire serves as a constant reminder of the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed their town. Townspeople are implementing an ambitious plan to identify the properties at the highest risk of burning and, if the owners are willing, buying the properties and turning them into fire-resistant green spaces. Read more here.

As temperatures rise, so do the health risks for California's farmworkers. Read more here.

California is the nation's top almond producer, but the drought is taking a toll on the industry. Read more here.

Wildfire smoke could threaten West Coast wines; grape growers are scrambling to protect their vineyards. Read more here.

The megadrought has prompted water cuts for farmers and residents; it's also setting the stage for bitter legal and political fights from conservationists who want to keep waterways wet to protect fish habitats. Read more here.

Conservation groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service over a plan to log some trees that burned down in an Oregon wildfire last year. The groups say an environmental study should be done first to make sure the logging doesn't cause flooding and doesn't hurt nearby rivers or endangered species. It's far from the first time conservationists have clashed with government officials over post-wildfire logging. Read more here.

Local reporter pushed and punched several times while covering anti-mask, anti-vaccine rally in Traverse City, Mich.

Brandon Quealy

The Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Office in Michigan is investigating a complaint that a Traverse City Record-Eagle reporter was punched in the face while attempting to cover an anti-mask, anti-vaccine rally last week, Mardi Link reports for the Record-Eagle.

The incident happened when reporter Brendan Quealy went to a public park in a nearby township Thursday to cover an event organized by Citizens Liberating Michigan. The group opposes masking and vaccine mandates, and announced the event after the local school board voted to require masking for all K-12 students and staff through Sept. 27, Link reports.

After Quealy began recording audio of the event with his cellphone, an event organizer, Heather Cerone, told him they did not authorize recording of the event, and claimed it was on private property because they rented the park pavilion. She directed people to stand in front of Quealy to prevent him from seeing what was going on, Link reports. Quealy told investigators that two men approached him and told him to leave, pushed him, and one of the men pushed him into a wooden fence and punched him in the face with both fists.

Traverse City (Wikipedia map)

The county prosecutor told Link that, though a pavilion may be rented for a private function, other people—including reporters—have the right to be in areas surrounding the pavilion, and event holders must accept that the pavilion is open-air and that their events may be seen and heard by others.

Sheriff Tom Bensley told the Record-Eagle that some people "are not happy with the news outlets," and said this was the second anti-news media incident he's seen recently. The first incident happened in May, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer visited rural Leelanau County. Sheriff's deputies arrested a man after a local television news crew recorded him trying to destroy a microphone and spitting at the camera, Link reports.

Farm income forecast due Thursday; online event at 1 ET

The Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service will release its second Farm Income Forecast for 2021 on Thursday, Sept. 2. That same day at 1 p.m. ET, USDA economist Carrie Litkowski will host a free, one-hour webinar to discuss the contents of the report. Click here to register for the webinar.

The most recently published farm income forecast, released in February, predicted that net farm income would drop $9.8 billion to $111.4 billion in 2021. Though cash receipts were expected to increase in 2021, lower direct government farm payments were predicted to drive most of the decline in net income measurements. Higher production expenses, including spending on feed, fertilizer and labor, was also expected to contribute to the decline in net income. That's particularly significant as drought drives up feed prices.

The forecast is updated three times a year, usually in February, August and November. From the webinar page: "These core statistical indicators provide guidance to policymakers, lenders, commodity organizations, farmers, and others interested in the financial status of the farm economy. ERS' farm income statistics also inform the computation of agriculture's contribution to the U.S. economy's gross domestic product."

The latest American dead in Afghanistan reflect small towns' ties to the military and the diversity of the United States

The Pentagon has released the names, ranks, ages and hometowns of the 13 service members killed by the suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The list reflects the disproportionate share of U.S. service members that come from small towns and rural areas, and also the geographic and cultural diversity of our huge country. In the order listed by The Washington Post, which has brief profiles of each one, the heroes are:

• Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyo., population 11,000, a resort town next to Grand Teton National Park. He was a newlywed expecting a baby next month.
• Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, of Wentzville, Mo., a St. Louis suburb in St. Charles County.
• Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas, pop. 4,800, on the Rio Grande, which folks on the other side of the river call Rio Bravo del Norte.
• Navy Hospital Corpsman Max Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio, a village near Lake Erie with an estimated population of 636 in 2019.
• Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, Calif., a date-growing city of 80,000 in the Sonoran Desert and home of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
• Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20, of Norco, Calif., in Riverside County. The town of 27,000 requires buildings to "reflect a desired Western theme," including qualities "described as rural, informal, traditional, rustic, low-profile and equestrian oriented."
• Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, 31, of Utah. The Pentagon listed no town, but his Facebook page says he attended high school in Midvale, a near suburb of Salt Lake City.
• Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, of Omaha, at 475,000 by far the largest hometown on the list.
• Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn., a Knoxville suburb, also the hometown of several country musicians, including Kenny Chesney. In second grade, he wrote in his yearbook, “I want to be a Marine,” the Post reports.
• Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25, of Lawrence, Mass., a Boston suburb of 80,000 that was one of America's first manufacturing centers. She was of Dominican heritage.
• Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Ind., a town of 18,000 in the north-central part of the state that is a suburb of Kokomo, pop. 58,000.
• Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, of Roseville, Calif., pop. 141,000 and the largest town in Placer County, which extends across the Sierra Nevada to the state line.
• Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., pop. 180,000. The second word of its name is a Native American term meaning "sandy place." Many young Americans have died in sandy places in the last 20 years.

Some state fairs cancel again, or delay, while others forge ahead, many 'requiring' masks but not enforcing mandate

Thousands, few of them masked, packed the Iowa State Fair. (Des Moines Register photo by Bryon Houlgrave)

Most state fairs are back on this year after 2020 cancellations, but with the Delta variant driving record coronavirus infections across the country, things looked a little different than usual.

Many fairs trimmed down on rides so attractions could be spread out in the service of social distancing, and introduced options for buying food without cash or contact. Most Midwestern fairs offered opportunities for people to get vaccinated, David Pitt reports for The Associated Press.

Pharmacist fills syringe at the Iowa fair (AP photo by Charlie Neibergall)

Some states required fairgoers to wear masks, but anecdotal reports are that such mandates weren't enforced much. Midwestern states such as Minnesota and Iowa encouraged but didn't require masks (Minnesota fair officials said it was because they couldn't figure out how to enforce it). After the Wisconsin State Fair, which clocked 841,000 visitors and had no pandemic restrictions, 46 coronavirus infections were confirmed in connection with the fair and eight more were suspected to be connected.

Kentucky's state fair requires masks indoors, but the mandate is toothless since they aren't enforcing it and most people aren't obeying it anyway. Fairgoers get unlimited free rides if they get a coronavirus vaccination at the fair, though.

California and Washington delayed their fairs for months in an attempt to duck the worst of the Delta variant surge, and Ohio closed its fair to outside visitors altogether, only allowing in agricultural and educational competition entrants.

Fact-checking Biden and Republicans on Afghanistan

President Biden has made remarks "that haven't always squared with the facts" in defending how he has handled withdrawal of U.S. forces and citizens from Afghanistan, FactCheck.org reports.

Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that his decision to withdraw completely went against the advice of top military advisers, who wanted him to keep about 2,500 troops. "It was split," Biden said. "That wasn’t true." Stephanopoulos asked, "They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?" and Biden replied, "No. Not at — not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn’t argue against that." Stephanopoulos pressed the case, and Biden denied that he could not recall anyone telling him that 2,500 troops should remain.

"We don’t know what exactly Biden’s top military advisors may have told him in private conversations, or whether their recommendations may have changed over time," Fact Check reports, but says Biden’s account is contradicted by reporting from The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and a public Feb. 3 report from the Afghanistan Study Group created by Congress recommended against troop withdrawal unless the Taliban met conditions set in a withdrawal agreement the Trump administration reached with the Taliban in February 2020.

Biden asked at one point, “What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone?” but there's lots of evidence show that al Qaeda isn't gone, FactCheck notes: "A February report by the Defense Department inspector general's office said 'members of al-Qaeda were integrated into the Taliban’s leadership and command structure.' And in May, U.N. sanctions monitors reported that al Qaeda 'is resident in at least 15 Afghan provinces, primarily in the east, southern and south-eastern regions.'"

Biden claimed that the concept of “nation building” in Afghanistan “never made any sense” to him, but he publicly favored it in the early 2000s, FactCheck notes: "In a 2001 interview, he was asked if the U.S. should “be in the business of nation building” in Afghanistan 'if and when the Taliban falls.' Biden replied, 'Absolutely, along with the rest of the world.'"

Biden's handling of the withdrawal, and Thursday's suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and 60 Afghans, has drawn attacks from Republicans, and some were outrageous, Chuck Todd and crew at NBC News say in today's "First Read" newsletter: "It wasn’t too long ago when, after a devastating attack, the United States united around its president, grieved, vowed retribution and saved the political finger-pointing for later. But that didn’t happen yesterday."

First Read cited Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn's tweet that “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin and General Milley should all resign or face impeachment and removal,” North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn's request that the Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Biden, and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley's demand that Biden resign. The barrage "only served to polarize an already polarized country," First Read says. "It cheapened the legitimate criticism that Biden has gotten (and will continue to get) for his handling of the U.S. withdrawal; and it’s not serious at all. Do Blackburn, Hawley and Cawthorn really want Kamala Harris or Nancy Pelosi as president?"

Fertilizer runoff hurts poor communities more, report says

Runoff of nitrates from fertilizer disproportionately harms low-income communities, especially since treating the water is often too expensive for cash-strapped towns and counties, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found.

"Nitrogen contamination is linked to livestock production as the tons of nitrogen-rich manure produced by animal feeding operations is used as fertilizer in crop fields," Madison McVan reports. "While livestock operations must account for nitrogen levels in the soil and in the manure when applying manure to crop fields, the manure combined with commercial fertilizer can result in too much nitrogen being applied to the ground." Heavy rains often ferry the excess nitrogen into bodies of water where communities get their drinking water.

Nitrates are usually undetectable, and consuming large quantities can lower blood oxygen, especially among vulnerable populations such as children and immunocompromised people. Water treatment plants aren't generally equipped to filter them out, and adding such a system could cost millions, McVan reports.

Quick hits: Reaching rural students with school breakfast; mental health-care assistance hard to find in rural areas

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email heather.chapman@uky.edu.

A webinar discusses how to help mitigate rural hunger with school breakfast. Read more here.

Alabama's rural electric co-ops are way behind on the solar curve, says a new report. Read more here.

A podcast discusses how mental-health care is often difficult to access in rural areas, with a focus on Missouri. Read more here.

Journalist reports that the Sackler family took $10 billion out of Purdue Pharma before the company declared bankruptcy. Read more here.

Rolling Stone has a feature on high-tech Kentucky greenhouse company AppHarvest, which has lost $28.5 million so far. Read more here.

Rural residents with head and neck cancer are significantly more likely to die by suicide, a study has found. Read more here.

Misinformation roundup: Facebook hid unfavorable report; health agencies fight fire with fire, using social media

Misinformation about coronavirus vaccines is widespread, partly because many holdouts don't trust the government or large, mainstream news-media sources for information. For better or worse, that means people are most influenced through friends, family and social media, whose algorithms often turn platforms into echo chambers that boost even extreme opinions.

A report from Facebook showed that, from January through March, an article casting doubt on coronavirus vaccines was its highest-performing link, and a site boosting vaccine misinformation was one of its most-visited pages. The company shelved that report for fear of public blowback; the Biden administration has criticized Facebook for allowing such misinformation to flourish.

Some state and local health departments, adopting an "if you can't beat 'em" philosophy, are seeking to boost vaccination rates among the under-40 crowd by paying social-media influencers to post pro-vax content on Facebook, TikTok and Facebook, Kate Queram reports for Route Fifty.

Some influencers live a little closer to home, though: faith leaders, medical professionals, friends and family also have some sway over vaccine skeptics, though they acknowledge often it's difficult to make headway.

Public-health officials have voiced hope that more religious leaders would encourage their congregations to get vaccinated, particularly among white evangelicals, some of the most resistant. But Southern pastors Politico interviewed said they didn't want to bring up such a divisive subject and risk alienating their flock.

In southeastern Kentucky, where vaccination rates are low and infection rates are high, health-care workers say they're trying to fight misinformation without being too confrontational, writes Jamie Lucke for Kentucky Health News.

For example, Dr. Shelley Bundy Stanko, chief medical officer at CHI Saint Joseph London and medical director of the Laurel County Health Department, said she's frustrated by how politicized vaccination has become, and said she works hard to reassure patients that it's safe and necessary. A few patients are willing to listen, but many (probably the majority) are "sort of shutting down and not absorbing the information," she told Lucke. Stanko said she continues trying to reach patients non-judgmentally, because "confrontation does not help." Instead, she urges people to research facts instead of relying on neighbors, social media, or television.

New rural Covid cases up 18% last week; deaths up 70%

New coronavirus infections, in ranges by county, Aug. 15-21
Daily Yonder map; click the map to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

During the week of Aug. 15-21, nonmetropolitan counties saw 161,326 new coronavirus infections, an 18 percent increase from the week before, and 1,513 deaths, a nearly 70% spike from the previous week, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. About two-thirds of the new infections and half the deaths were in the South.

"New infections spread more quickly in rural counties than in metropolitan ones last week, resulting in a rural infection rate that is 25% higher than the metropolitan rate," Murphy and Marema report. "The current rate of Covid-related deaths is more than two times higher in rural counties than metropolitan ones."

Click here for an interactive county-level map, regional analysis and charts from the Yonder.

Arizona student journalism package recounts the history of child sexual abuse in Native American communities

Journalism students at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication have produced an outstanding multimedia package on child sexual abuse in Native American communities. "Little Victims Everywhere" also explores where the federal government, which is responsible for investigating such cases, has not been held accountable for its track record since it wasn't required to publicly disclose the disposition of such cases until about a decade ago. 

The stage-setter of the package explains how widespread the problem of child sexual abuse is in many North American indigenous communities. "Some experts estimate it could impact as many as half of all children," it reports. The second chapter recounts how many cases fall through the cracks of the justice system. The third shows how tribal courts and police have limited authority and resources to sufficiently investigate cases and hold abusers accountable. The fourth shows how some Native Americans are trying to find their own ways of bringing healing and justice to their communities. The final chapter steps back for a longer view, discussing how intergenerational trauma dating back to the colonization of North America has contributed to the problem of sexual abuse in Indian Country.

Podcast explores how Biden broadband infrastructure plan could address rural poverty and help close digital gap

A recent Brookings Institution podcast discussed how President Biden's broadband infrastructure plan could address rural poverty while helping bridge the rural-urban digital gap.

Only 72 percent of rural Americans have home broadband internet service, and those who do are likely to pay much more for it than suburban or urban dwellers. Rural Blacks and Latinos are even less likely than other rural residents to have home broadband, Nicol Turner Lee reports for Brookings.

The podcast addresses rural/urban and white/minority broadband disparities, as well as what local challenges communities will face in building out broadband, and what policymakers, industry insiders, and others can do to support it. 

Court allows postage-rate increases to take effect Sunday; newspapers and other mailers will keep up court fight

A federal court is allowing postage-rate increases to take effect as scheduled Sunday, Aug. 29.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a petition by the National Newspaper Association, the News Media Alliance and others to block the increases, averaging 9 percent. They had had argued that the Postal Regulatory Commission’s authorization of the increase was flawed, so it should be delayed until a court decides whether that is the case.

"The court simply issued a statement that the petition was denied, without providing any reasoning for the decision," NNA said in a news release. “The court rarely issues such stays,” NNA Chair Brett Wesner, president of Oklahoma-based Wesner Publications, said in the release. “This was always the longest of long shots to try to delay the increase. We felt the impact of a double-digit increase, between last January’s rate hike and the second one of the year coming this month, was overwhelmingly damaging to community newspapers.”

Wesner added, “This decision does deliver a blow to newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat. It does not diminish the basis of our original lawsuit. The oral argument on that case will proceed on Sept. 13. We expect a decision by the court by the end of the year. That decision could send the whole matter back to the PRC for reconsideration, and the PRC has the authority to roll back this increase if it so chooses. Congress also has the authority to take action here. I think our members have led the industry in reaching out to Congress about the financial distress of USPS and the need for postal reform.”

NNA and other mailers hope for passage of a bipartisan postal-reform bill that would resolve persistent financial issues of the U.S. Postal Service. A summary of the committee-approved bill is circulating among members, indicating that it is being lined up for a vote in the full House. An identical bill has bipartisan support in the Senate. Among the bill's many provisions is a huge expansion of newspapers' ability to mail sample copies to non-subscribers, a potentially great boon at a time of declining print circulation, which remains the principal source of revenue for almost all newspapers.

As the nation's climate warmed over the last 30 years, most of the West got drier and most of the East got rainier

Change in annual average precipitation, in inches, over the past 30 years compared to 20th century overall
(New York Times map; click on the image to enlarge it)

Over the past three decades, the U.S. has seen increasingly extreme weather. In the East, that tends to come in the form of flooding and storms; in the West, droughts and wildfires. 

"The map above, created using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows the eastern half of the country has gotten more rain, on average, over the last 30 years than it did during the 20th century, while precipitation has decreased in the West," Aatish Bhatia and Nadja Popovich report for The New York Times. "Thirty-year averages are often used by scientists to glean big-picture climate trends from temperature and precipitation data that varies substantially year to year."

"It’s not yet clear whether these changes in precipitation are a permanent feature of our warming climate, or whether they reflect long-term weather variability," the Times reports. "But they are largely consistent with predictions from climate models, which expect to see more precipitation overall as the world warms, with big regional differences. Broadly: Wet places get wetter and dry places get drier."

That shows on the map. The boundary between drier and wetter in the Southern Great Plains lies roughly along the 100th meridian of longitude, the traditional boundary between dry-land farming and more typical agriculture.

USDA won't appeal order blocking debt-relief program for minority farmers, but says it will keep fighting in court

In an unusual move, the Department of Justice is not appealing a judge's order blocking an Agriculture Department program to forgive debt for some minority farmers, due to past USDA discrimination. At least 12 white farmers, in concert with conservative and libertarian groups, filed suit, insisting that the program is racially discriminatory, and won preliminary rulings, Politico reports.

"While the Justice Department has filed appeals within hours to defend the administration’s high-profile priorities in areas like immigration, this time federal government lawyers let the 60-day appeal period run — and then run out," Josh Gerstein and Ximena Bustillo report. A USDA spokesperson said the administration would continue to defend the program in district courts.

Some minority-farmer advocates are disappointed that the Justice Department didn't appeal, but it may have been a long-game move to protect other programs for minorities, Gerstein and Bustillo report. If they had appealed the hold, they risked a higher court ruling that would have established unfavorable legal precedent. The minority farmer relief program will likely remain in limbo while the Justice Department continues arguing the cases in lower court, a process that could take months or even years.

Texas' solar-power boom alters landscape, sows rural ire

Texas Farm Bureau photo shows construction of solar site.

Solar energy is the fastest growing source of electricity in Texas, with the state projected to become one of the nation's top solar-power producers by the end of next year. But the proliferation of solar panels in rural areas has sparked controversy among residents, Julie Tomascik reports for the Texas Farm Bureau's Texas Agriculture Daily.

Solar energy development companies are offering farmers, ranchers and other landowners "lucrative leases, around $450 to $1,200 per acre per year with incremental increases. The leases range from 20-40 years, with the option for additional long-term renewals," Tomascik reports. "The steady income can help smooth out the financial roller coaster of growing crops and raising livestock, and there’s no cost to the landowner for 'raising' solar panels."

Detractors say they're not necessarily against solar energy, but they don't want it taking up valuable farming and ranching land. Less farming and ranching means less money for area businesses that sell fertilizer, feed, tractors, and more, they say. Also, "critics say development of these projects stresses rural infrastructure," Tomascik writes. "Farm-to-market and county roads built for occasional heavy loads are subjected to an onslaught of heavy machines and loaded gravel trucks. Crop fields and pastures once lush with livestock and new growth are covered with rock and guarded by chain-link fences topped with razor wire."

One of those critics, a farmer named Robert Fleming, organized a successful grassroots effort to convince the local school district to reject a tax abatement program for solar projects. A bill to extend the statewide solar tax-abatement program past 2022 failed in the legislature earlier this year.

The controversy over solar panels comes months after extreme winter weather knocked out power to much of Texas. The state mostly depends on natural gas for power, but poorly insulated pipelines left the power grid vulnerable. Solar panels work fine in winter as long as there's sun or sufficient battery storage, a technology that is still developing.

New rural vaccinations rose by a third last week; the rural vaccination rate is still lower but increased faster than metro

Vaccination rates as of Aug. 19, compared to the national average and adjusted to account for vaccinations not assigned to specific counties. Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or here for the interactive version.

New coronavirus vaccination in rural and urban counties increased dramatically last week. Rural counties still have a lower overall vaccination rate than metropolitan areas, but the rural rate for new vaccinations was higher than in metro counties last week.

During the week of Aug. 13 to 19, about 237,000 rural Americans became fully vaccinated for the coronavirus, up about one-third from the previous week's 172,000 rural residents. That bumped the overall rural vaccination rate up half a percentage point to 37.6%, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. The overall metro rate was 49.1%, up one-fourth from the previous week's rate.

"The increase in new vaccinations was widespread" Murphy and Marema report. "Of the nation’s 1,976 nonmetropolitan counties, 1,450 (73%) had more vaccinations last week than they did two weeks ago. In metropolitan counties, 995 of 1,165 counties (85%) had higher numbers of vaccinations."

Click here for an interactive county-level map, regional analysis and charts from the Yonder.

Permian Basin wells leak huge amounts of methane; plugging them could help slow climate change

A tank battery near Big Spring, Texas, spews methane through an open hatch, visible only with infrared cameras. (Photo and video by Sharon Wilson; image on right is a screenshot of the video, in which the gas emission is more apparent.)

A recent United Nations climate report stressed the need to cut back fossil-fuels emissions to stave off the worst effects of climate change. A Harvard University postdoctoral student's research found that one measure could go a long way toward doing that: find and plug methane leaks in hydraulic fracturing wells in Texas and New Mexico, Zachary Mider reports for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Yuzhong Zhang, now at Westlake University in China, found that fracking operations in the Permian Basin were dumping 2.9 million metric tons of methane into the air each year, enough to negate most of the environmental gain from burning natural gas instead of coal. "By one measure, that cloud of gas is contributing as much to global warming as Florida—every power plant, motorboat, and minivan in the state," Mider reports. "Identifying and plugging these leaks could do more to slow climate change than almost any other single measure. Unlike carbon, methane breaks down relatively quickly in the atmosphere. That means efforts to curtail it can pay off within a generation."

Permian Basin (Bloomberg map)

One recent estimate found that reducing human-caused methane emissions could stave off nearly one-third of the global warming expected in the next few decades without having to cut overall consumption or invent new technology. That would involve plugging leaky wells and reducing emissions from other sources such as landfills and cattle feedlots, Mider reports. But plugging Permian oil and gas wells could offer the biggest payoff for the least money.

Though companies such as BP have significantly reduced their emissions, state and federal laws haven't really forced drillers to take action. That's changing, little by little. A federal methane rule, which applied to a limited number of oil facilities, was restored this year after being gutted by the Trump administration. "Now the Environmental Protection Agency is crafting a rule that would apply to more wells," Mider reports. 

And "Senate Democrats plan to include a 'methane polluter fee' in their $3.5 trillion budget resolution that would hit energy producers that vent or burn off excess methane and compressors used to pressurize and transport natural gas," Ximena Bustillo reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture.

At the state level, the New Mexico Environment Department is phasing in limits on flaring and methane. Texas has not taken significant action on either front, Mider reports.

And, as Inside Climate News notes, Texas is diverting one-third of the money meant for clean-air initiatives to widening highways in order to reduce congestion. Vehicle licensing and sales fees and surcharges generate as much as $250 million a year for that fund. The state has about $2 billion in unspent funds meant to mitigate air pollution.

Covid roundup: Facebook groups, ads fight misinformation; vax mandates don't violate Nuremberg Code, as claimed

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

Because of worldwide emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine, the Food and Drug Administration has never before had so much evidence to confirm a vaccine's safety. Read more here.

Rural health clinician shortage threatens care access as hospital admissions soar. Read more here.

Pfizer's permanent FDA approval is triggering a flood of vaccine mandates from schools and businesses. Some pandemic misinformation sources claim that such mandates violate the Nuremberg Code, a set of ethical guidelines on human subjects in scientific research. One such tenet prohibits forcing people to participate in trials for an experimental drug. However, coronavirus mandates do not violate the Nuremberg Code because the vaccines are not experimental: All have received at least emergency FDA approval, which requires substantial proof of safety and efficacy. Read more here.

Smaller rural hospitals are as overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients as urban hospitals are, but the rural hospitals have to face it with fewer resources. Read more here.

Rural Georgia hospitals say they're flooded with Covid patients, most of whom are unvaccinated. Read more here.

As more employers and schools require vaccination, more people are trying to use phony vaccine cards (some imported from China). It will be difficult to crack down on the practice. Read more here.

A Pennsylvania farmer refused the coronavirus vaccine at first, but later caught the virus and was admitted to the hospital. Now he's created a video imploring other skeptics to get vaccinated. Read more here.

A group of moms on Facebook is waging a grass-roots war on pandemic misinformation, seeking to inform skeptics and convince them to get vaccinated. Read more here.

Groups are buying targeted Facebook ads meant to counteract pandemic misinformation. Read more here.

Mississippi residents can now face jail time or fines if they refuse to self-isolate after getting a positive coronavirus test. Read more here.

A new study projects how pandemic surges could hurt rural residents and hospitals. It also highlights key vulnerabilities in rural populations and health-care systems, discusses their implications, and suggests In short: rural areas' generally lower vaccination rates, coupled with rural hospitals' unique organizational, clinical and financial vulnerabilities could mean bad news. Read more here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided in May to only track breakthrough infections that lead to hospitalization or death. That has made it harder for public-health authorities and researchers to understand the coronavirus's impact on the vaccinated. Read more here.

The more remote a county, the greater the 20-year job loss, but more educated and recreation-based economies grew

Gain or loss of jobs by county metropolitan or non-metro status, 2000-19
Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

The nation gained 20.2 million jobs from 2000 to 2019, a 14.8 percent increase. But rural America lost jobs overall, with half of all counties losing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But rural-urban differences aren't the only factor influencing job trends.

The data shows "there are two different countries — one that is gaining jobs and people and another that is losing both," Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing report for The Daily Yonder. "The division between those two countries is created not only by the difference between the city and the countryside, but by the structure of local economies and local levels of education."

Bishop and Cushing analyzed job numbers in light of other factors that seem to influence job creation. They found that, in general, the bigger the city, the bigger the percentage increase in jobs over the past 20 years, and vice versa: the more remote the county, the bigger the jobs loss.

Local economies also made a difference, they found. Counties that depended mostly on agriculture lost nearly 3% of their jobs, while manufacturing counties saw a 5.3% increase. "The biggest job gainers in rural America were recreation counties, such as Gallatin County, Montana, and Hawaii County, Hawaii," they report. "In fact, the counties, urban and rural, with the fastest growing job base over the last two decades, according to the USDA Economic Research Service, were places with strong recreation economies. Across the country, recreation counties increased their jobs by just over 25% from 2000 to 2019."

Bishop and Cushing also found that, the larger the share of college-educated adults a county had in 2019, the larger its job gains since 2000. "Counties with 23% or less of the adult population having B.A. degrees in 2019 increased their jobs by just 6% since 2000," Bishop and Cushing report. "Those where more than 40% of the adults had B.A. degrees had a 21.4% increase in jobs over the two decades."

Small Minnesota towns push back against dollar stores

Redwood County (Wikipedia)

Dollar stores are seeing explosive growth nationwide, targeting low-income areas and food deserts in cities and rural areas. But local businesses suffer, especially grocery stores, when dollar stores move in. That's why two two towns in Redwood County, Minnesota—and many others—have blocked the discount chains from setting up shop.

This year in Wabasso, pop. 765, the City Council "passed a one-year commercial development moratorium, shortly after declining a request by Dollar General to annex a piece of adjacent farmland where it wanted to build a new store," Patrick Condon reports for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In nearby Morgan, pop. 872, "officials and residents banded together" to get Redwood County's planners and its governing board to reject rezoning for Dollar General to build on farmland just outside the city, Condon reports: "A petition against Dollar General's plans to set up in Morgan drew several hundred signatures in a matter of days." One business owner told Condon that a nearby community's independent grocery store went bankrupt within six months after a Dollar General opened there. Though dollar stores typically lack fresh meat and produce, it has some supermarket-style stores.

Many communities worry about the proliferation of dollar stores, Kennedy Smith, senior researcher for anti-corporate-consolidation nonprofit the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told Condon, who reports, "This year alone, towns and small cities in Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Tennessee, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and Alabama have rejected dollar store development plans, according to ILSR's research. Critics see not just threats to existing businesses but also a disincentive to prospective new retailers once a dollar store has set up in town. An ILSR report in 2018 on the spread of dollar chain stores cited studies that found local grocers typically see a 30% sales drop after a Dollar General opened, a decline that makes it tough for businesses that operate on thin profit margins."

As Kennedy noted and an analysis from The Hustle shows, shoppers at Dollar Tree often don't end up saving, since the unit price of dollar-store items is often higher than those at larger retailers.

Tourists during pandemic overwhelming parts of Appalachian Trail, other national and state parks

Hikers the stretch of the Appalachian Trail known as the Roller Coaster took in the view of State Highway 7 at the Bears Den Overlook in Northern Virginia this month. (Washington Post photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

The Appalachian Trail has always been a popular destination for day-trippers and tourists, but during the pandemic, interest has skyrocketed, overwhelming local officials' ability to maintain some parts of the trail, Lizzie Johnson reports for The Washington Post.

"Sandi Marra, the president and CEO of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, said the increased usage is most obvious on the trail itself: abandoned banana peels and aluminum cans, four-foot-wide trails that have suddenly doubled in size, the overflowing parking lots," Johnson reports.

At Max Patch, a popular campsite in North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest, the damage was especially bad. Marra said it looked like "a field at a music festival. . . . People were up there with their dogs and tents and coolers and pavilion tents." The field has been shut down, and it will be two years before the damage is repaired and camping can resume.

Big national parks like Yellowstone have tried to limit visitors with tactics such as timed entry tickets and a reservation system, but crowd control is more difficult on the Appalachian Trail because it runs through 14 states and has hundreds of access points, Johnson reports.

The throngs of visitors to national parks all over the country prompted a Senate subcommittee hearing in July to discuss congestion and overcrowding. "We can accidentally love our parks to death," said subcommittee chairman Angus King, I-Maine, who said he couldn't think of any immediate solutions other than encouraging tourists to visit less-crowded parks and places. "Watching the sun rise from the top of Cadillac Mountain is a wonderful experience," he said, referring to a feature in Acadia National Park in his home state. "Staring at the taillights of the car in front of you as you’re trying to get up the mountain and find a parking place? Not so much."

Digital divide narrows; fewer than 1/3 of rural adults in poll said government should get all connected in pandemic

"Rural Americans have made large gains in adopting digital technology over the past decade and have narrowed some digital gaps. However, rural adults remain less likely than suburban adults to have home broadband and less likely than urban adults to own a smartphone, tablet computer or traditional computer," reports Emily Vogels of the Pew Research Center, citing its latest polling on the topic.

"While broadband adoption has not significantly increased for urban and suburban Americans in the last five years, rural residents have seen a 9-percentage-point rise in home broadband adoption since 2016," Vogels reports, but "rural residents are still less likely than those living in suburban areas to report having home broadband," by 72% to 77%.

They are also less likely to have internet-connected devices, and less likely to have multiple devices, Vogels reports: "Three in 10 adults who live in rural communities report owning or having a desktop or laptop computer, a smartphone, a home broadband connection and a tablet computer, compared with 44% of urban and 43% of suburban adults."

Also, "Rural residents go online less frequently than their urban counterparts. Eight in 10 adults who live in rural communities say they use the internet on at least a daily basis, compared with roughly nine in 10 of those in urban areas (88%)."

While much of the talk about the digital divide has focused on what federal and state governments can do about it, "Only 29% of rural adults say the government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans have a high-speed internet connection at home during the coronavirus outbreak," Vogels reports. "In comparison, 50% of urban residents and 35% of suburbanites say the same, according to previously unexplored data from an April 2020 Pew Research Center survey."