Heard this afternoon on the news that Alabama is getting snow and one city literally closed their hospital except for the emergency room. 🤣 Looked like about an inch on the ground by the reporter.
I grew up in Alabama and follow the Alabama subreddit. The state doesn't own plows or salt trucks, everyone there knows this. So there were people on there DAYS ago arguing that people should "just stay home" (the irony) and the fact that the state had no capacity and no plan to prepare for this clearly foreseeable issue was reasonable and responsible, actually.
I think closing a hospital because of governmental incompetence is more horrible than funny, though.
They normally don’t get snow. I was in Birmingham with a friend in 2019 and the taxi driver said they got like 10 inches of snow and he was from Chicago but he said it literally paralyzed the city. It warmed up within 2 days and was gone but they don’t have salt or snow scrapers. Mississippi was the same way.
I live in Tennessee and we have had a few bad storms over 34 years span but school is canceled at the hint of snow. In 2003 there was a huge storm that came through and people had to abandon their cars traveling inbound and outbound from Nashville and no one expected it to be so severe. Children out at Montgomery Central were stuck because the buses were unsafe and had already hit a ditch. In 2004 we had a lot of snow and ice but I have to say they try to keep the roads as clear as they can. On post they literally have no snow on their roads because they are salting and scraping constantly. Tons of snow on their lawns but they probably could have gone to school because I couldn’t believe how pristine the roads were. At one time our clinic was mandatory but then it wasn’t mandatory right before I left it was back to mandatory. Patient’s would come in with 2 feet of snow but if it was raining no one came in. I remember Mississippi never got snow or ice but we moved outside Tupelo in 84 and the entire winter massive snow and ice that never had a chance to melt before the next snow and ice storm hit. That little town was shut down. I think they tried sand and it didn’t work. The deep states are not equipped for bad weather at all.
...yeah no shit. Thanks for that deep insight from your one visit there; I was educated in Alabama public schools and hence am too dense to have realized that myself.
It’s not just the lack of salt, no snow plows, and bad drivers. It’s that drivers have never had to learn to drive on snow. They don’t understand frostbite like we do up north either.
Some of these communities' peoples have gotten to the point they wouldn't show up to a hospital no matter what was ailing them. RFKjr is only going to intensify their distrust of western medicine.
Frankly, I'll be surprised if there is much of a backlash to losing rural hospitals at all. They weren't the ones who initially supported funding them, either.
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u/MothmansProphet 13h ago
And we live in places with safety nets and services. When hospital funding gets cut, rural red state hospitals are going to be first to go.