highest per capita coronavirus mortality rate in the nation: St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana

[Demovictory9]

St. John the Baptist Parish, just southeast of Baton Rouge, La., has a population of just over 43,000 — and the highest per capita coronavirus mortality rate in the nation.

Frantic local officials instituted an overnight curfew just this week and are begging residents to stay home. But in largely rural Southern states like Louisiana — where social distancing has been spotty, widespread testing is unavailable and hospitals are poorer and farther apart — the response may be coming too late to avoid a public health crisis as bad as the one now engulfing New York.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/03/coronavirus-rural-south-164225


With the same kind of equipment and staffing shortages plaguing big cities on the east and west coasts, local officials are left begging residents to stay indoors.

As of Friday, St. John the Baptist had nearly 300 confirmed cases and 22 deaths. The state health department says the region is already at 56 percent of its hospital bed capacity and 68 percent of its ICU bed capacity, with the virus’ peak not expected for at least another week and cases doubling every 2.5 days.

Local nursing homes and elder care facilities have become coronavirus clusters, with the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Home accounting for more than a third of the parish’s deaths. Area leaders are bracing for that number to continue to rise.

[CaptYossarian]

1. Is this where the Duck Dynasty Neanderthals reside?

You can't molest 15-year old girls if you can't breathe.

[7wo7rees]

3. No, they live in northern LA, Monroe area. Smack dab in the middle of state.

Very shall we say backwards, country/rural, part of Bible belt. Very much like East Texas.

[CaptYossarian]

5. Too bad.

So how long can the virus live in those beards?

[customerserviceguy]

2. A lot of Cajuns down there

I've corresponded with a few that I'm related to from ancestors who were expelled by the British in 1755, who I found on DNA sites.

[Blue_true]

6. I read that the ancestors got chased out of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and

New England. Don't know how they made it all the way to Lousiana, my guess is it was French at that time, so they were welcomed when ports along the way rejected them.

I am African American, but my mom was very light-skinned. Her mom was a creole from Lousiana and was even more light-skinned than my mom. The story in my family is that we are part American Indian. One of my nieces is interested in genetic tests, I personally don't give a shit one way or the other, modern medicine allows me to understand my genetic risk markers.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Exactly

Before Napoleon sold the land in the Louisiana Purchase to the United States, indeed, it was where the ships were allowed by the British to go. They did not want the French-speaking Acadians to join forces with the Quebecois, as they had designs on taking over the rest of Canada.

Many of the people of modern-day Louisiana have multiple European ethnicities. There were Germans who settled along the Mississippi, a there were Spaniards from the time when it was a Spanish colony. A few years ago, I did a pedigree tree for a fellow in California who had been born in Louisiana, and found all of these ethnicities. He and I share only one segment of DNA, but it was clearly from the Acadians.

The story of the Acadian displacement is a sad one, but it is rich with history.

[blitzen]

4. I'm really not trying to be snarky (honestly), but this is absurd...

It's a very small population. At least 19 of those 22 deaths were in two facilities--a veteran's home and a nursing home. It's ridiculous to draw any generalizations or comparisons from that.