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'It's Gone Haywire': When COVID-19 Arrived in Rural America

Associated Press

   DAWSON, GEORGIA - The reverend approached the makeshift pulpit and
   asked the Lord to help him make some sense of the scene before him: two
   caskets, side by side, in a small-town cemetery busier now than ever
   before.

   The Rev. Willard O. Weston had already eulogized other neighbors lost
   to COVID-19, and he would do more. But this one stood as a symbol to
   him of all they had lost. The pair of caskets, one powder blue, one
   white and gold, contained a couple married 30 years who died two days
   apart, at separate hospitals hours from each other, unaware of the
   other's fate.

   The day was dark. There was no wind, not even a breeze. It felt to some
   like the earth had paused for this.

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