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Dr. Alex Garza has never wanted to be more wrong.

That’s what he wrote in “Health Progress,â€� the journal of the Catholic Health Association, shortly before he took leave from his job atop the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force. He was headed to Kuwait for a tour with the Army Reserves, in which he is a colonel.

Garza had written a different piece for the fall 2019 edition of the journal, before COVID-19 was raging in the U.S. In it, he compared fighting the nation’s epidemic of gun violence with an out-of-control virus.

“The most opportunistic biological weapon generally is what makes a pathogen also difficult to combat in the field,� Garza wrote two years ago. “This includes easy dissemination, effective transmission, difficulty in detection and no vaccine or effective therapy. From a global perspective, if this is combined with an ineffective public health response, or a weak government, it becomes a catastrophe.�

Indeed, the failure of the government at multiple levels, including Missouri, is being seen on a national stage while the delta variant rages out of control in Springfield and some other rural counties. Most of the country’s biggest media outlets are focusing on the Show-Me State as Ground Zero of the latest pandemic surge.

Garza sent me a link last week after he headed out for his deployment. He had mentioned it to me when we talked before his tour began. “I have never wanted to be so wrong about something in all my life,� Garza wrote in the journal’s most recent edition. “As I have reflected on this past year, the loss of life, the political and civil divisions in our society, the economic toll and the populations that were hit hardest by the pandemic, mostly the poor and vulnerable, it is difficult to recognize how life was prior to 2020. The past year has, at a minimum, amplified those things which make societies and civilizations fragile.�

On Sunday, the mayor of Springfield, Ken McClure, explained just how fragile our society had become on NBC’s “Meet the Press.� McClure is an old hand in Missouri Republican politics, having been a chief of staff to former Gov. Matt Blunt, a member of the Public Service Commission and an executive at Missouri State University. He is an old-school Republican, the sort who tells the truth and doesn’t pander to conspiracy theorists.

So when he was asked about battling misinformation — one of Garza’s greatest laments over the past year — McClure hit the issue head-on: “I think we are seeing a lot spread through social media as people are talking about fears which they have, health-related fears, what it might do to them later on in their lives, what might be contained in the vaccinations. And that information is just incorrect. And I think we as a society and certainly in our community are being hurt by it.�

And when asked about health officials going door-to-door to encourage vaccination, a process that some Republicans, including at one point Gov. Mike Parson, and as recently as this weekend, U.S. Rep. Jason Smith of Salem, have turned into a big-bad federal conspiracy, McClure calmly explained the truth of the situation:

“I think the whole discussion and going door to door has been overblown. I will tell you that public health has been using the … door-to-door philosophy for years,� McClure said. “It has been a tried-and-true practice which they use. Our Springfield Greene County Public Health Department is using it, has been using it for a long time. But the key is that these are trusted community people. We call them community advocates. So, it gets down to the people that community members will trust, spreading information that is factual and trustworthy.�

The delta variant is coming to other Missouri communities, McClure warned, and he’s right. ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is already seeing an uptick in hospitalizations, though nowhere near the emergency level seen in Springfield. To avoid yet another deadly surge of COVID-19, McClure and Garza, two men from disparate backgrounds and ideologies, are singing from the same hymnal:

Tell the truth. Get vaccinated. Ignore the misinformation and help your neighbor.

“The surge will spread,� McClure told a national television audience. “And so hopefully people can learn what we’ve been experiencing here in Springfield.�