Daily Beast: “The record-setting COVID-19 surge in Missouri springs from Branson, a superspreader tourist town whose visitor policy – to sell lots of tickets and take few precautions – is endangering thousands of lives. ‘It’s crazy busy with no mask mandate,’ said the person who answered the town’s tourist information line on Thursday. As the crowds come and go, the infection rate for Branson and surrounding Taney County is 19.3 percent. There are 54 new cases a day in a population of 57,000, which is 10 times the national per capita average. More than two-thirds of the population are unvaccinated, including the very nice tourist information person. ‘It’s not happening,’ she said when asked if she had gotten the shot. ‘Have a blessed day.'”

“These statistics acquire particular significance in a locale that provides what one prominent virologist and epidemiologist terms ‘prime conditions’ for COVID-19 to spread – and all the more so for the highly contagious Delta variant. ‘Branson has a lot of country-western shows,’ says Dr. Marc Johnson of the University of Missouri School of Medicine. ‘No Vaccines. No masks. A bunch of people indoors and air conditioning, tightly packed, listening to music, possibly singing along, i.e. a superspreading [event].’ Johnson oversees a statewide program to monitor COVID-19 via wastewater samples, or sewer sheds. He was able to chart the spread of the U.K. Alpha variant in Missouri from urban to rural areas between February and the end of April, when it essentially took over. ‘I thought that was really fast,’ Johnson said. Then, on May 10, his lab received what he calls ‘the Branson sample’ from one of the town’s two sewer sheds. The RNA test results identified the state’s first confirmed appearance of what would become known as the Delta variant, which originated in India. The Delta variant showed up in Branson’s other sewer shed the following week.”