It felt like Covid-19 was closing in around us during the five days in August this CNN crew spent in Carter County, Missouri.In Van Buren, the county’s biggest town, we were sitting next to a 16-year-old when she got a text that masks would be mandated at school because about 20 kids had tested positive after just two days of class. One person we’d wanted to interview had to go to the hospital with a breakthrough infection. Another person found out the night before our interview she’d been exposed to coronavirus by a sick kid at church.People were gossiping about who had it and where they got it and whether there was someone in town who knew they had it but refused to isolate.”Everybody’s scared. Everybody’s coming down with it. And it’s almost like a plague,” Brandon Helvey said. Helvey had had Covid-19 three weeks earlier, but he didn’t want to get the vaccine yet, he said. He thought it was […]