I read That Appalachia Essay and now I’m mad. My family tried to get me to quarantine with them in Asheville and I refused—because I knew I was a possible disease vector who could put the community at risk and place a burden on already-scarce healthcare resources.

I lived in rural Western NC. Not “pegged to be overrun”? The hospitals there are already overrun all the time. NC has 35 counties with zero ICU beds & 17 counties with no hospital at all. The NICU in Asheville serves 18 counties.

Also this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of epidemiology and risk. Possibly freeing up one hospital bed in NYC will not have much impact on the direction of the outbreak in NYC. But seeding a new outbreak in another state could have a devastating impact.

^^I don’t know a lot about epidemiology so I vetted that tweet with my husband who did his PhD in mathematical disease modeling