In the dusty fields of the San Joaquin Valley, “El Profe” brings masks, music and help to farm laborers, some of whom are barely scraping by.
A year ago, Rene and his colleagues with the Fresno campus of UC San Francisco, saw hospitals in Italy overrun with COVID-19 patients. They knew it was only a matter of time until it reached California’s fifth-largest city, which has some of the nation’s most concentrated poverty and is surrounded by farm towns where people work closely in the fields, packing houses and processing plants.
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Some of the doctors bought RVs or built guest houses to keep themselves separate from their families. Recently, a senior doctor in the department said he would get the vaccine because he loved his wife and had not kissed her in eight months to protect her.