MO counties in the St Louis metro "re-opening" Monday (going against CDC guidelines requiring 2 consecutive wks of declining cases) have a problem, the same as other red counties nationwide. They don't have the medical/public health infrastructure to deal w/a COVID rebound. 1/
St. Charles County has 52 ICU beds. Jefferson County has 26. Franklin County has 13. That means if the white-flight exurban pro-Trump counties are wrong, and their "re-opening" leads to a COVID-19 rebound between May 18 and Memorial Day, they won't be equipped to deal with it. 2/
And that means their willful ignoring of scientific advice will spill over into St. Louis City and County, where all the research hospitals and universities, and most of the medical professionals are concentrated. 3/
That means the heroic medical pros who've been battling the virus for months will be overloaded again, this time by people whose willful ignorance and insistence that a pandemic is another culture war battle has led to a resurgence of coronavirus cases. 4/
It also means that the grinding sacrifice of essential workers in the City and County, and the frustration and hardships of the hundreds of thousands of City and County residents who've stayed at home to successfully break the virus chain if transmission will have been wasted. 5/
This is the problem being faced by every blue city in every red state. City residents, workers, and med pros have done the right things. And entitled Tea Party exurban yowlers are set to blow it all up, and depend on urban expertise to rescue them when they're wrong. 6/
