“As my uncle always told me, these people aren’t your customers, they’re your friends and neighbors.” Ric Griffith, pharmacist at Griffith & Feil in Kenova, a W. Va. town near the Kentucky state line.
The picture above is how I remember driving through West Virginia when I was a little boy. And everyone was so damned nice, friendly and personable. I was told some mountain folks were skeptical of outsiders, but my memories of the Mountain State are wonderful. As an adult, I read of coal mines shutting down, and as an environmentalist, that was both good news and inevitable. As a human being, picturing tens of thousands of miners, one more generation doing what past generations have done, losing their jobs, the only work they and their families have ever known – was heartbreaking.
So many West Virginians justifiably felt betrayed by a Democratic Party, once dedicated to the working man, leaving those miners and many more in West Virginia with little or no hope… their own party supporting policies that were shutting down their livelihoods. Even though that was a reality that would have come to pass no matter who was running government. Coal was on the global “energy obsolescence” hit list; demand for the product was plunging. “Clean coal” was nothing more than pumping effluents and toxic byproducts underground.
But what about those miners? Their families? The businesses that relied on their patronage? The only commercial success was in selling illegal opiates to a depressed community. A strong belief in basic Christian values pulled some through, but somehow West Virginia seemed to have been left behind. But nobody in Washington seemed to care much. Too bad. Get over it.
If there ever were a fertile ground to plant populist seeds, West Virginia was more than ready. When Donald Trump made promises he knew he couldn’t keep, it did not matter. Someone was listening to them. Bad Washington was in for a spanking. West Virginia had become one of the reddest of the red states, Trump-land on steroids. But how do you explain that one of the most powerful voices in the state, a man respected above all others who has served three terms as a US Senator, is a Democrat? Albeit a conservative Democrat: Joe Manchin, whose moderating influence might just make him that bridge to Congressional compromise so desperately needed in Washington.
“Manchin, a three-term senator and former governor of West Virginia, is the most well-known of a set of moderate Republicans and Democrats who can decide whether to slow down legislation to a crawl or open a pathway to it becoming law… ‘There is going to be an important role for him to play as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat regardless of who won control of the Senate,’ said Nick Rahall, a former Democratic congressman from West Virginia.” The Guardian, January 17th.
But how could anyone professing being a Democrat, one who backed Joe Biden, have been elected in West Virginia? And therein lies the secret of West Virginia and so much of small-town America. If there ever were a place where “love thy neighbor” actually means anything, it is in that demographic. As we’ll see, that is precisely why West Virginia seems to be the most effective implementer of the mass COVID vaccine inoculation effort in the nation. In West Virginia, it’s an accumulation of neighbors and neighborhoods. People caring about people they know.
The larger and more diverse a political body, the more impersonal and statistical it becomes. Of necessity. And that’s a reality that New York, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Georgia cannot change. Unless large states learn how to harness communities within their borders to do what seems to be insurmountable. Let’s take a closer look at the West Virginia model and results.
Cuney Dil, writing for the January 17th Associated Press explains: “Griffith & Feil Drug has been in business since 1892, a family-owned, small-town pharmacy. This isn't their first pandemic… More than a century after helping West Virginians confront the Spanish flu in 1918, the drugstore in Kenova, a community of about 3,000 people, is helping the state lead the nation in COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
“West Virginia has emerged as an unlikely success in the nation's otherwise chaotic vaccine rollout, largely because of the state's decision to reject a federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens and instead enlist mom-and-pop pharmacies to vaccinate residents against the virus that has killed over 395,000 Americans… More shots have gone into people’s arms per capita across West Virginia than in any other state, with at least 7.5% of the population receiving the first of two shots, according to federal data.
“West Virginia was the first in the nation to finish offering first doses to all long-term care centers before the end of December, and the state expects to give second doses at those facilities by the end of January… ‘Boy, have we noticed that. I think the West Virginia model is really one that we would love for a lot more states to adopt,’ said John Beckner, a pharmacist who works at the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Community Pharmacists Association, which advocates for pharmacies across the country…
“It's early in the process, but that has not stopped Republican Gov. Jim Justice from proclaiming that the vaccine effort runs counter to preconceived notions about the Mountaineer State… ‘Little old West Virginia, that was thought of for hundreds of years, you know, as a place where maybe we were backward or dark or dingy,’ Justice said last week… Rather than relying on national chains, 250 local pharmacists set up clinics in rural communities. The fact that residents who may be wary of the vaccine seem to trust them makes a difference.” Trust. Neighbors. Care.
Since the federal government never had and still does not have a central plan to distribute the vaccines, the effort was left to underfunded and ill-prepared states. Joe Biden tells us that getting that central plan going is his first priority as President. But that does not happen overnight.
You’d think that high-tech and wealthier states would have solutions to effective distribution. Here in Los Angeles, vast pools of healthcare workers have yet to be vaccinated. Very, very few nursing homes have even been offered the vaccine. And while the CDC has said folks over 65 and those with medical vulnerabilities should be vaccinated now, even as California as a state has accepted those guidelines, those vulnerable Angelinos are being told that they would be lucky to get access to any of the vaccines even in February.
Yet, West Virginia is showing up the rest of the nation. There’s pride mixed with genuine concern among those Mountain State residents. They’ve overcome vaccine skepticism by focusing on using trusted appropriate community businesses to inoculate their citizens, rejecting the failed rigid and dehumanized nation approach. Those of us in arrogant mega-urban centers, virtually all very blue, have a lot to learn from those Americans who get it right… in some very red communities.
I’m Peter Dekom, and as I watch the ultra-violence of a right-wing assault on our governmental centers, stories like the West Virginia approach to vaccinations gives me hope that it just might be possible for us all just to become “Americans” again.
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