Don’t say Gov. Mike Parson never gave Missouri cities anything.

He’s given hundreds of thousands of people in the state’s largest metro areas their own version of the Hunger Games -- a chance to hunt for the COVID vaccine in the reddest parts of the state.

More than 30,000 vaccine seekers in a private Facebook group are sharing stories like this recent post: “Drove with family members to Poplar Bluff for the Butler County mass vaccination event today, hoping for leftovers. Arrived at 3 p.m. (event ended at 4), told them we were Phase 3 and not yet eligible for appointments and just hoping for extras and were vaccinated within five minutes.”

Even when a vaccine hunter’s quest ends in success, these stories highlight the abject failure of state leadership.

Every day, there’s another example. The town of Monett, Missouri, with a population of less than 9,000, recently received another 1,000 Pfizer vaccines. Initially, only 100 people signed up to receive them. If St. Louis-area residents want to get those potentially lifesaving shots, they are invited to make the eight-hour round-trip drive to Monett. Twice.

More than 7,700 doses of vaccine were left over after mass vaccination events across the state in a single week, my colleagues reported. At an event at a high school in Unionville in late February, they had to throw out 143 unused vaccines.

Imagine that: wasting vaccines in rural Missouri, while more than 200,000 eligible people in St. Louis County are still waiting for theirs.

Parson has repeatedly defended the state’s vaccine distribution, which just so happens to heavily favor the areas that voted for him, as fair and equitable.

After seeing Parson’s comments, one reader wrote to me: “Don’t piss on us and tell us it’s raining, Governor.”

Meanwhile, The Missouri Independent reported that a consulting firm (paid for by the taxpayers) has repeatedly found Missouri’s urban centers have the largest “vaccination gap” -- the estimated number of eligible residents who still haven’t received their first dose of the vaccine.

The governor needed Deloitte Consulting to tell him this?

Beginning next week, an additional 550,000 Missourians will be eligible to get the vaccine -- including teachers. Perhaps the most ethical way for educators in big cities to spend their upcoming spring breaks would be to join in these Vaccine Hunger Games: Those who have the time and skills to hunt down a rural vaccine, and the means to drive hundreds of miles to get it, ought to do so. Hopefully, this will free up more doses in urban areas -- making it easier for the disabled, the elderly and the poorest residents, who can’t make an hours-long journey, to get the vaccine closer to home.

In fact, this is the advice that the St. Louis County Department of Public Health is giving residents who call them asking where they can get a shot.

For those who qualify and are able, “drive out and get the vaccine wherever they think they can get it,” said Dr. Faisal Khan, director of St. Louis County Department of Public Health. “The distribution of the vaccine is the major concern. The supply is the root cause, but the allocation piece has been a chronic issue,” he said.

Even as Missouri’s governor slowly realizes there is more “vaccine interest” in the most densely populated areas of the state, the supply is still a trickle.

“On March 15, we will have 130,000 more people eligible in St. Louis County, while the supply is still between 3,000 to 4,000 for our public health department,” Khan said. Hospital systems and pharmacies have their own allotments, but the health department often serves the most vulnerable populations.

Since he isn’t running for reelection, perhaps Parson feels protected from consequences of his pettiness, regardless of how deadly it could be.

But there are Republican legislators in these parts, too.

City-dwellers who have been left in a vaccine desert ought to ask their local GOP representatives to have a word with their guy.

He’s made it clear who he’s willing to hear.

LaMonte Rusan was 19 years old and working minimum-wage jobs when he made a life-changing decision: He and his girlfriend, Kia, decided they would take over raising his brother’s two babies.

Rusan’s brother, DeMarco, and his partner had died in a car crash in 2018, leaving behind a 4-month-old infant and an almost 2-year-old toddler.

“I couldn’t say I was exactly ready for kids, but I felt I was mature enough to take on the responsibility,” he said. He said DeMarco used to joke with him, “If you are thinking about having kids, you can have some of mine.”

Kia also wanted to step up. “I can’t let kids just be out there,” she said.

The kids lived with their maternal grandparents for six months after their parents died, then moved in as foster children with Kia, Rusan and his mom in January 2019. Rusan was 19 -- still too young to formally adopt -- so his mother filed the petition.

Rusan and Kia got married later that year, and when his mother gained custody of the children in January 2020, she handed the reins over to the newlyweds.

Rusan had graduated high school in 2017 and started to work right away, hoping to save enough money to one day attend college or vocational school. He had always had an aptitude for computers and enjoyed working with his hands. Now, with two more mouths to feed, he searched for a better-paying job on Indeed.com. He sent in hundreds of applications, but never got a response.

One day, he saw a post for a 16-week technical training program with a guaranteed seven-week internship. It claimed the training was free. He figured there was probably a catch, but he applied anyway.

Much to his surprise, he received a response and an interview. There wasn’t any catch.

St. Louis is one of just eight cities with the NPower job training program for underserved young adults. There are also programs in New York, New Jersey, California, Michigan, Maryland and Texas, and one in Canada. The nonprofit accepts applications year-round from high school graduates between the ages of 18 and 25, and also from veterans, especially focusing on people whose income is near the poverty level. The courses pivoted to virtual instruction because of the pandemic, and NPower plans to continue with that model.

Rusan, now 21, realized that the opportunity could change his family’s life; now, he had to figure out how to carve out four hours each day for the training. Kia found a job as a teacher’s assistant to help with household expenses, and his mother took over child-care duties during the day. Rusan switched to a part-time retail job and picked up food delivery shifts at night.

The program has provided more than training on IT fundamentals -- it’s also offered mentorship and professional development skills, such as preparing a resume. If Rusan had trouble with the course material, he would do research online or ask the instructors for help.

Even before he graduates next month, he’s landed a job as a help desk technician with Midwest Networking in the St. Louis area.

Wendell Covington, executive director of NPower St. Louis, says he sees success stories like Rusan’s in every class. There have been 338 graduates in the St. Louis region since the program began here in 2017. Nearly 80% of students who begin the training complete it and earn the certification.

“We feel we are a game-changer,” Covington said, in terms of disrupting cycles of poverty and creating pathways to economic prosperity for those lacking access to in-demand skills.

The Rusans’ kids are now 3 and 4 years old. The couple says they are working hard to give the kids better opportunities than they had.

“Even though we were so young, we had to grow up so fast,” Rusan said. “I want to allow them to be kids.”

A year ago, I received a handwritten note from Missouri’s health director, Dr. Randy Williams, inviting me to join his book club.

We had corresponded briefly once before: I had written a column criticizing his efforts to track the periods of women who had used Planned Parenthood services. He sent me a note responding to my story and dropped off a book about loving your enemies, which I read.

But in early March, when I received Williams’ book-club invitation, I said to my editor, “Why the heck is the state’s health director writing to me during a global pandemic?”

I didn’t use the word “heck.”

This was back in the early days of the pandemic, when the then-president was actively lying to the country about a virus that would eventually claim more than 500,000 American lives. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a loyal soldier of the now twice-impeached leader, didn’t seem worried about what was coming down the pike.

Last March, I had only recently become alarmed about the strange new virus. I had just visited friends in Northern California -- one of whom is a doctor and a top public health official -- and her words were still ringing in my ears when I read Williams’ note.

“Be prepared for disruptions to our normal way of life,” my friend had said. She advised me to stock up on masks, hand sanitizer and household supplies, and to cancel my travel plans for the immediate future.

That sounds so alarmist, I told her. I asked her if it was possible that students might miss school because of this virus.

She looked at me like I wasn’t quite getting it.

As the crisis unfolded, the fact that our state’s top health official had the time to invite me to a book club did not engender a great deal of confidence in how the state was going to respond to the threat. I decided not to reply until this virus stuff got under control.

Well, it’s been a year. Let’s see where we are.

More than 8,200 people have died of COVID-19 in Missouri.

Remember when COVID skeptics kept saying it was “no worse than the flu”? I had hoped I would hear Williams or Parson speak out more forcefully against that harmful lie. There were a number of other doozies that I heard constantly: The media won’t report on COVID after the election in November (false). There’s nothing we can do to stop it (false). Masks don’t work (false). Last but not least: It’s only killing the old and infirm (morally bankrupt -- and false).

I wonder how many lives could have been saved and how much suffering averted if my state’s leaders had clearly, consistently and forcefully called out these dangerous lies. To be honest, I didn’t hold out much hope for the governor, but Williams graduated from medical school, which is a lot further than the governor or I got in our educations.

We saw extraordinary courage from some public health officials, who tried their best to protect their communities. That courage just didn’t seem to trickle up in Missouri.

Now, COVID cases are finally coming down, and there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible is the biggest challenge. Unfortunately, we’ve fared worse in that regard than many other states. The word I keep hearing from doctors and others familiar with the situation is “disaster.” Less than 6% of people in Missouri are fully vaccinated.

Maybe Williams can help turn this ship around. This may seem too obvious, but how about setting up more mass vaccination events -- especially in parts of the state where tens of thousands of people are on waiting lists? One St. Louis-area hospital system’s waitlist contains a staggering 330,000 people.

It’s interesting that Williams was concerned enough about women’s health to track their periods, but that his concern doesn’t extend to the vaccine. Teachers, more than 75% of whom are women in Missouri, are not prioritized in our state like they are in others. Nor are people with autoimmune diseases, which disproportionately affect women.

We remember the urgency with which Parson called in the National Guard when there was violence during the protests after George Floyd was killed. Given that more than 8,200 Missourians have died from this pandemic, and that there have been more than 500,000 cases, it would be great to see that same energy directed toward vaccinating people.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping things will be closer to normal by the fall.

Maybe we could celebrate with a good read if the book club offer still stands.