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Platte County, Wyoming, Visitor Center, and Chamber of Commerce are located on the southern tip of Wheatland, a high-planes agricultural town known for its proximity to good fishing spots. According to the state health department, 13 residents of the county died in covid-19.
Wheatland, Wyoming — According to Brandon Graves, covid-19 arrived in Wheatland just as a new movie would take place in this rural High Plains.
“It was a kind of trickle and never actually exploded here,” said Graves, a lifetime resident and mayor of about 3,500 towns, the largest in Pratt County.
Many residents say that the virus that causes covids felt more like an inconvenience imposed on them by outsiders than a public threat. For example, utility bills were delayed because the company that prints the utility bills is in a city that was hit hard by covid. And the town is stuck in repairing and re-repairing one of its dilapidated garbage trucks. This is because the replacement ordered was delayed by more than a year due to a shortage of microchips due to covid.
Next is “Colorado Navy,” the local nickname for a parade of vehicles that pull boats across state borders each summer. Shauna Reichert, secretary general of the Pratt County Chamber of Commerce, said the numbers surged last year as people searched for lakes and campgrounds during the pandemic.
Campers were very crowded around the Gray Rocks Reservoir, a popular fishing spot outside the town, Reichert said, “it literally looked like a city.” The crowd dumped the place in the trash and the rancher lost a few cows. I found a plastic bag in my stomach.
Shawna Reichert, Executive Director of the Platte County Chamber of Commerce in Wyoming, said the first sign that covid-19 arrived in the area was when people from outside the state came to Wheatland to buy food and toilet paper. He said it was.
It’s no wonder that many residents are lukewarm with the idea of a corona vaccine. As of July 6, approximately 29% of the population of Pratt County has been fully vaccinated. by State Health Department. And in the resolutely conservative state of Wyoming, about 32% of the population is fully vaccinated. One of the lowest vaccination rates in the country..Perhaps not surprisingly, the states One of the highest new case rates in the country..
Surprisingly, a neighbor south of Wyoming recently experienced a similar case spike. Colorado is a democratic state, with approximately 53% of its population fully vaccinated and among the top 15 states with the highest immunization rates.It also had 12th highest new case rate in the state As of July 9, it ranks some states that are lower than Wyoming.
One of Colorado’s most vaccinated counties is San Miguel County, which has a population of just over 8,000, similar to Platte County in Wyoming. Both counties entered June with high infection rates and maintained them for several consecutive weeks, but vaccination rates were opposite to each other. Less than one-third of the population of Pratt County is fully vaccinated, and about one-third of the population of San Miguel County is not. A thread common to both locations: pockets of unvaccinated residents.
Health officials are paying attention to covid Hotspots that have emerged in the last few weeks It is linked to a low vaccination rate.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said: “The condition may look pretty, and you can think of it as” it’s not a big deal. We have this. ” However, if you drill down at the county level, you may see a much different story. “
The county level may not be fine enough to show the true risk. A small uptick in case makes sense even in a sparsely populated county. It’s not just because the infection can spread across county and state boundaries.
“A slight increase in cases in rural areas can have catastrophic consequences, because medical resources in those places can be scarce to save lives,” she says. I did. “There is good research showing that the ability of a virus to kill a person depends in part on the bandwidth of the medical system to save the person.”
After several months of case reports, Platte County Public Health posted a warning on Facebook in early June, with 14 people testing positive for covid in the same number of days and 12 admitted to the hospital.
The series of incidents hit Pratt County into a high transmission speed “red zone.” “Platt county contact tracing shows that unvaccinated people work and hold rallies when they are ill,” the post read.
Joan Ivaska, Senior Director of Infection Prevention at Banner Health, which operates 25 beds hospital Wheatland confirmed that enthusiastic patients were hospitalized during June, but she did not reveal some.hospital There are only two Adult intensive care unit.
She and other health authorities continue to emphasize that better vaccination rates are the only way to return to normal.
In early June 2021, several Covid patients were admitted to the Platte County Memorial Hospital operated by Banner Health in Wheatland, Wyoming. The 25-bed facility has only two adult intensive care units.
Kim Deti, a spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Health, said the problem wasn’t just the politicization of the corona vaccine, which opposed many. It also means that many people have resumed their activities and believe that the pandemic is behind them.
“For some time, relatively low levels of covid-19 disease have been present in most parts of the state, affecting threat perceptions,” Detty said. “Many people are working hard and trying as much as they can. Wyoming coverage is not due to lack of effort.”
In San Miguel County, Colorado, people were excited to get shots from the beginning. “The interest has been very enthusiastic since the vaccine became widely available,” said county spokesman Lindsey Mills.
San Miguel County achieved President Joe Biden’s vaccination goal of at least one vaccination of 70% of adult residents a few weeks before July 4. Nevertheless, the county was experiencing a surge in covid cases similar to Wyoming’s response.More than 460 days after Colorado declared a disaster emergency, San Miguel County First covid death June 14th.
Reason? It turns out that not everyone was as enthusiastic about the vaccine as the high rates in San Miguel County show. Approximately 80% of eligible residents opt-in to the eastern part of the county, where Telluride’s wealthy ski resort community is located, according to figures provided by the local health department. On the west, only about half of what residents call the West End was selected. .. As a result, the county remained vulnerable to continued expansion.
Roads wind through the mountains of Civil Canyon, Wyoming, past houses between Laramie and Wheatland, a wildlife research center, and an old iron mine.
According to the mayor Mike Bordonha, the east-west division of San Miguel County reflects the existing cultural division. The sparsely populated western part of Utahline was historically the county’s breadbasket, where crops and livestock were grown in mining towns like Tellride, now known for skiing and its films and bluegrass festivals.
A KHN analysis of the data provided by San Miguel County shows that since the beginning of the pandemic, most of the county’s Covid cases have been on the eastern side where most residents live. However, the table changed in May. The West usually recorded less than 10% of county cases in the first year of the pandemic, but in May and June, Delta variant..
In late May, an unvaccinated woman in her late 70s living in the county’s West End caught a delta variant on a post-funeral carry-on and died a week later in the hospital. Other unvaccinated funeral participants were also infected with the virus.
Amanda Baltree, contact tracing supervisor at the San Miguel County Public Health Service, said:
Sheila Grother, an EMT and contact tracer who has lived in the West End town of Norwood for over 30 years in collaboration with Baltzley, is about the same time as a woman whose two vaccinated West End residents died. A delta variant, over 70 years old. Recovered..
“I was at people’s homes when they were the worst and were with them on their worst days,” she said. “I used to think that people had some confidence in my judgment. I think some do, but so many. They don’t intend to get a damn vaccine.”
But county leaders are hoping that some people will change their minds. According to Bordogna, health officials are working on plans to set up secret vaccination stations at the following county fairs and rodeos so that people can be easily vaccinated without worrying about being found. The goal is to create a system where participants can, for example, tell family and friends that they are heading to the bathroom and take shots instead.
“Overall, Wheatland is open to business,” says Brandon Graves, the mayor of the town of Wyoming. “If people need to get out of the epicenter, which is still closed, come to Wheatland and eat steak. There are some great steakhouses.”
When I returned to Wheatland, few people noticed the hospitalization that took place in early June. Alice Wichert, who manages Motel 6 in the town, suspects that most residents were probably completely unaware of the surge in incidents.
“No one here was very afraid of it,” she said. “We almost lived our lives.”
But that was not the case for some temporary motel residents. Angela Brixius is a Nebraska laboratory engineer working in a local hospital. There, among other things, she processes the covid test and regularly encounters patients who are convinced that covid is a hoax.
“I’m worried that unvaccinated people are out and talking to everyone they meet about this isn’t feasible,” Brixius said. “I meet people in the hospital:” I don’t need a cotton swab. I don’t have a covid. It’s not real. “
“People are still dying in covid, because people are still dying in covid,” Brixius said before leaving the door in search of food and fresh air before the shift from 3 pm to midnight in the lab. , Should be done. “
