How West Virginia's decade of bad luck steeled it to fight Covid

From a 100-year flood to a chemical leak, the state has approached its challenges the same way - and now that method has helped to distribute 81% of available vaccines

It's usually bad when West Virginia makes headlines. The state has a long, sad history of severe poverty, bad health outcomes, political corruption and disasters both natural and manmade.

But by mid-January, some very good news started coming from West Virginia: somehow the Mountain state was putting 81% of its available vaccines into the biceps of its citizens while bigger states struggled to distribute even half of their available vaccines.