ABILENE (AP) — In the weeks that Mark Riggs went from feeling worn down before Thanksgiving to dying of COVID-19 last Monday, only six calls about people not wearing face coverings rolled into the Abilene Police Department.
Even though defiance of Texas' mask mandate is easy to find here.
When Riggs checked into the hospital, a morgue trailer big enough to stack 24 bodies had just arrived out back. A medical field tent sprung up in the parking lot while doctors moved the 67-year-old college professor to a ventilator. He died in an intensive care unit that has been full for weeks and is the largest within roughly 15,000 square miles of pumpjacks and cattle pastures, bigger than Maryland.
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