Now, smaller towns and parishes in western Louisiana are also seeing an increase. Calcasieu, a parish of about 200,000 near the Texas border, has more than 3,000 cases and has seen a spike in recent days.
“People didn’t really have the opportunity to see the virus in the community,” said Lacey Cavanaugh, a doctor who is director of public health for the area. “People didn’t know their friends and family who had gotten sick and been hospitalized. I think to a lot of people, it felt like something that was happening in big cities, not small communities.”
The Baton Rouge area has also seen an increase, particularly among people aged 18-29, and 95% of the cases are community spread, said Dawn Marcelle, a physician who’s the regional medical director.
Swartzberg, the Berkeley professor, said ignorance and crisis fatigue aren’t adequate reasons for America’s failure to tame the virus.
“That doesn’t explain why Europeans aren’t exhausted. That doesn’t explain why Taiwanese aren’t exhausted,” he said. “Everybody’s been through this.”
Instead, he blames a lack of national leadership, or worse, leadership that has been detrimental to fighting the virus. “I feel very frustrated about how poorly we’ve done,” Swartzberg said.