JACKSON, Wyo. — A recent story by U.S. News & World Report used Teton County as an example of a community that reacted quickly and decisively to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
In the piece ‘It’s Not Rocket Science’: How America’s Healthiest Communities Have Battled the Coronavirus,’ senior editor Joseph P. Williams compares and contrasts different counties’ approaches to the pandemic and how decisions made by health officials helped those communities rally against the spread of COVID.
As the virus raged through NYC and then into neighboring New Jersey suburbs, Williams writes: “Half a continent away, as Wyoming’s ski season wound down, Jodie Pond’s plan to fight the oncoming contagion ramped up. The health director for a county that includes Jackson Hole, an international tourist destination, Pond and her colleagues decided the area must go on lockdown, even if resort and business owners didn’t like it.”
In trying to find a common denominator on why some communities have been hit harder than others—is it demographics, urban versus rural, overall community health in general?—what U.S. News & World Report found was that the better prepared a county was, the better it weathered the storm.
“Teton County…has escaped relatively unscathed from the virus compared with many other places around the U.S.,” Williams wrote.
Pond told the magazine the local effort has been “all about shared sacrifice.”
Williams noted Teton County’s early and aggressive reaction to COVID back in March “that included early orders limiting gatherings in the county to members of the same household and mandating that older adults and other high-risk people stay at home.”
“We closed down all three of our [ski] resorts and asked people to go home,” Pond told U.S. News & World Report. “We lived in a bubble—nobody came in and nobody left.”
For a time, the gambit paid off, Williams wrote. “By mid-April, the county’s infections had plunged. But Teton’s businesses took a hit, and at least some tourists weren’t happy.”
The story also acknowledged July numbers surged, causing Teton District Health Officer Dr. Travis Riddell to issue a mask mandate this summer.
