Americans don't trust each other and it is literally killing us, a study shows

It is part and parcel of our Second Civil War.
Rich

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
"Hundreds of thousands of people died in the pandemic because they didn’t trust the government or their neighbors to do the right thing. And it’s not getting better. Today distrust is making people sicker, especially where health care is fragile across giant swaths of rural America.
Americans trust their doctors. At least that was the idea, especially when it came to small-town physicians like Dr. Jennifer Bacani McKenney. She grew up in Fredonia, Kansas, population 2,151, and came back from medical school at the University of Kansas to practice there. People in town, all familiar faces, were over the moon, McKenney remembers. After all, health care is in short supply in rural Kansas, and Wichita, the closest large city, is 85 miles away.

But three years ago that trust and love suddenly crumbled when McKenney tried to shield her beloved little town from COVID-19.

“That was the first time in my career that I had people say, ‘No, we don’t believe you. We don’t think that a vaccine is the right thing. We don’t think we should wear masks,’” says McKenney. “And I was like, ‘Wait, remember that great relationship before, how you’d come to me for advice?"...