The priority was established by the preacher's daughter and nobody argued with her. And every time that things seemed to be on the brink of disaster, out of food, out of wood for fireplaces, out of blankets, in the words of the young lady in charge, "The Lord would provide."
Note: The limited effect of SARS and H5N1 leads people like this remarkable young lady to suggest the real reason isn't free-market medicine or hormones or "voluntary random associations" but that the Lord God looks over America. Given that "bigoted" and "stupid" and "backward" areas like Blackjack had lower mortality rates than more "enlightened" areas, even if similarly rural, it is occasionally hard to argue the logic.
They did not wait for the King to tell them what to do. They did not even wait for the local Lord, their elected county and city representatives, to tell them what to do. They just gathered in "voluntary random associations" and did whatever seemed to be the right thing at the time.
And it saved our nation.
Now we get to "who do you trust?" Well, you trust "us" whatever that "us" might be. Yes, if we're continuing this narrative, the white-bread residents of Smokey Hollow subdivision are not going to trust outsiders. They especially don't trust outsiders that don't look like them. Are they wrong?
Blackjack, again, was an interesting case. The local churches did not just take in those from their church. They ministered to anyone in need, which included Hispanic migrant farm workers as well as people who had become stranded on roads trying to escape the Plague. Did they trust those people? The answers given to the researchers were very Southern. Which means as opaque as a Japanese koan. "They were, by and large, nice people." "Did you trust them?" "They were, by and large, nice people."
The answer seemed to be "no." At least in the definition of "societal trust." But they also didn't turn them away. In places there were small towns and counties that closed their borders but Blackjack was, fortunately, far from major metropolitan areas and thus never reached the point of "overrun" with refugees.
The young lady in charge, however, only had problems from members of two minority groups: Hispanic males and African-American females. Neither group would accept her authority unless she brought in a male. Generally, that was one of the emergency workers who was catching a brief rest and a bite of whatever food was available. They were tired, they were frustrated already and they were very clear: You get what you're given, you give what help you can give or you get the hell out and go starve in the wilderness.
The news was still working and occasionally this sort of thing, or the "bigoted" counties that turned away refugees were pointed out on the news as signs of how "backward" such areas were.
Backwards and bigoted or just smart, wise even?
Let us take a look at our kumbaya brethren, what we can piece together of their narrative.
Comparing a city to a small, rural county would be ingenuous. I'll get to cities later. In the meantime, let's look at another case study.
Lamoille County, Vermont.
The county seat, Hyde Park, was a small town. The largest populated area in the county, Morrisville, had a population of 2000 just like Blackjack. The surrounding county had some farming but was primarily a "bedroom community" of mixed semi-retireds, "crafty" artisans and various others who for one reason or another could escape to the wilderness. Some of the homes were rentals but at the first touch of Plague the owners fled their suburban or urban residences and headed for the hills.
The county went 87% for Warrick. To call it bedrock rural "blue" is an understatement. The county government had issued nonbinding resolutions against the War in Iraq, the War in Iran, global-warming and every other cause celebre of the left. It had issued proclamations lamenting the fact that Lamoille was so intensively white-bread. Where are all our little brown brethren? Don't they know the Berkshires is the place to be?
Lamoille followed Frau Warrick's orders to the letter. Since they received a small shipment of vaccine, they were able to store about a third of their doses and kept the rest in styrofoam shipping containers. They violated the orders only to the extent of sending enough doses to the emergency services for them to spread their innoculations.
Instead of calling for people to come to the county health centers, though, they went out. They went first to nursing homes and innoculated all the old people. They got virtually every oldster that was in a nursing home or other care facility and that didn't object. Then they went to schools. That was harder. They had to get permission from the parents, first. Many of the parents were camped out at the, closed, county health centers so that was tough. They gave the schools a few days to get permission slips. God forbid they innoculate some poor dear when the parents objected.
The Plague hit Lamoille County in earnest about two weeks after they received the vaccine. Some of the vaccine had gone bad without refrigeration but not most. It was chilly in Vermont and it was stored in a back room. It, mostly, kept. But the only people vaccinated in the county, for all practical purposes, were the elderly, county workers, emergency service workers, some of the latter two's families and one school.
(Patient Zero at Copley Health Systems was a stockbroker from Massachusetts. His method of infection was never precisely determined. And many subsequent patients had never had interaction with him. But by then the Plague was really getting around.)
It took them two weeks to get to that point. At which point the schools shut down because parents were keeping their kids home, anyway.
It snowed that March in Vermont. It was a very cold and wet spring. People died. They were sometimes buried in backyards. People walked out and talked to their neighbors. There was some "voluntary random association" of local groups.
And at that point, it stopped. A few people, many of them long-term locals, gathered in larger groups centered around churches. The vast majority of the county, however, sat in their houses and waited for the King (Queen, actually) to tell them what to do.
Why?
Well, one reason was purely political. The vast majority of the "transport" population of Lamoille were liberals. Liberals Believe in the government the way that the young lady in Blackjack Believes in the Lord. It's almost a disservice to refer to such people as liberals. They were, in fact, aristocratists. They were very Old Country in that they felt that beyond their little fence it was the King's duty to fix things.
On average after one week they were out of Maslov's basic necessities, food, water. They then mostly drove to the nearest town to find help. They found dozens and hundreds of their mental brethren doing the same thing. The few "voluntary random associations" that had formed around churches or other societal groups tried to help at first. But there was no significant reciprocation. The transports felt that it was the duty of others to help them in need but not their duty to reciprocate. They wanted to be fed and watered and given shelter because it was a Right. From everyone according to their abilities, to everyone according to their needs. I have no abilities but I have lots of needs.
The voluntary associations, of necessity, started turning them away. Even if they had, societally, trusted the transports (and there had always been a degree of friction) they quickly learned that it was misguided.