One thing that hasn’t changed since the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Idaho is that Blaine County has consistently been home to about half of all cases. I predicted this a couple months ago, but it didn’t take a lot of intuition or intelligence to make that prediction.
Blaine County is large in size but small in population. It is made up of several small towns, the largest being the county seat of Hailey, population roughly 8,000. I live about ten miles north of Hailey in Ketchum, population of roughly 3,000. The whole county has a population of about 22,000; in most places it would be considered rural, and there are definitely places where that still applies.
But we’re a more urban environment than even some of the population centers in Idaho thanks to being home to Sun Valley, a world class ski resort. On any given weekend during the peak seasons of summer and winter, Ketchum and Sun Valley can have as many as 40,000 people in hotels, restaurants, shops, buses, ski lifts, etc.
I love living here for a million reasons. One, it is a small town, so wherever I go I run into someone I know. I don’t have a ton of friends but I have a million acquaintances, and some days when I’m out on a walk or grocery shopping, that short “hey! how’s it going!” really lifts my spirits. We do favors for each other here on a regular basis. Short a few bucks for lunch? Don’t worry, it’s on the house. Credit card declining at the store? No worries, come back tomorrow with the cash.
The working class here takes good care of each other.
But we don’t have to sacrifice culture or other urban amenities to have that small town familiarity. In the Spring and Fall, when we go into slack and have the town to ourselves without the tourists, we still have public transportation, concerts, nightlife, locally owned restaurants, theaters, etc. And if we’re sick of civilization- which you have to be on some level at all times anyway if you live in Idaho- it’s a short drive to the wilderness.
(We recently sold our truck, and we had all of our camping equipment stored in it. So we transferred it to the back seat of our car and when I told people “that’s our summer house back there” they knew exactly what I meant.)
This is where I live.
And where I live is being absolutely killed by this virus.
I’m writing this mostly for posterity, but it might give those of you in places that haven’t been hit hard an idea of what might be coming.
Sun Valley shut down operations early because of the virus. We usually keep the mountain open until Easter, but this year it went dark on March 15th. We only had a couple confirmed cases at that point, but we also had a lot of regularly scheduled events coming up, most notably our annual film festival that was supposed to be headlined by Amy Poehler this year, and we already knew at that point that bringing more people in from all over the country/world to gather in theaters and auditoriums wasn’t going to work.
That was the first domino to fall. With the closure of the Sun Valley lodge and cancellation of every other event, other hotels took a short “wait and see” approach but it didn’t take them long to shut their own doors. My wife manages one of the lodges here and we closed our doors on the 18th. By the end of that day, every other hotel except for a few in the southern part of the county did the same.
Likewise, almost all of our restaurants moved to take out/delivery only, and stores started limiting their hours of operation. The bars were the only places that kept operating as usual, letting people congregate in small places, then disperse outward.
Keep in mind, this all happened days before I took a screenshot of the map above, when we didn’t have a lot of confirmed cases. And that is perhaps why I’m so angry about the dithering response of the city, state, and federal governments.
We knew this was going to explode. We knew it was coming. We knew that cases would increase exponentially. But, and this really chaps my ass, local businesses had to take matters into their own hands and start closing shit down while the people we elected seemed to think it would just pass on its own.
At this point, our rate of infection is at or above NYC levels, which in a town this small in very noticeable. Our hospital is already overwhelmed. We’re losing or have lost a considerable number of our medical personnel, they’ve fallen ill and are in isolation. This doesn’t seem like a big deal in places where things are more or less operating as usual, but here? It’s a big fucking deal.
We are surrounded by truly rural areas that don’t have hospitals or their own first responders. In normal times, it’s not ideal, but it works. Today, though, it’s scary. I would love to go on a bike ride but, besides the isolation orders, I’m trying to avoid anything that could cause a serious injury. In normal times if I went on a bike ride and hit a frost heave the wrong way, sending me flying, I could call 911 and have an ambulance next to me in minutes.
But right now, that’s not a given.
The people in this town are pretty cool, though. While this is a deep blue county, there are still plenty of trump fans. They think he’s doing a great job, but even they think that reopening everything by Easter is….. optimistic. Of course, I think it’s much more malignant than that, but I’m not in the mood to argue with people about it. As long as they’re not arguing for the complete reopening of everything, I don’t really care. Even they know this is serious and requires a lot more than two or three weeks of our new normal.
In general, people are being *good*, and that’s about the best thing I’ve been able to say about humanity in about five years.
Of course, there is the not so good. Starting the week before an isolation order was issued for our county, people started hoarding food and other necessities, just like every other place.
I went to the market in the beginning of the month and the toilet paper aisle was empty and other food staples were gone. This wasn’t a problem for me, I thought.
If I ran out of toilet paper, I have back up because I can “borrow” some from the hotel. And once a month I drive 90 miles south to the nearest WinCo to buy groceries because money goes a lot further there than it does here, and I had already taken that trip for this month.
Well, that was not to be.
In the week before our first confirmed cases, all of the guests at the hotel left with all the toilet paper.
You know how when you stay at a hotel there is a roll ready to go plus one or two back up rolls just in case? Yeah. The guests took ALL the rolls with them when they left. Plus all the tissues and back up box of tissues. Even in the public restrooms, everything was taken.
So even if the hotel had wanted to stay open, we would have had to shut down because we didn’t have any effin’ toilet paper left to restock the rooms.
Still, I was okay because I had toilet paper and after we closed we got our shipment from the paper supply company. So for about two weeks now, I’ve been having to steal TP from the hotel, and I’m not the only one. We have several people who also live on site and they’re clearly hitting the supply room as well.
No hard feelings, obviously. It’s been impossible to come across toilet paper honestly for three weeks now.
Yesterday, however, I had to go to the store and was shocked to find the smallest amount of toilet paper AND hand soap in stock. I did the responsible thing and bought only what I needed. One bottle of soap, one six pack of toilet paper (and maybe a six pack of beer, but whatever).
I was shocked to find there were only three other cars in the parking lot, since for the last few weeks it’s been around the block parking. The store was pretty quiet, the employees noticeably less stressed than they had been in previous weeks. I told them I wanted to cry when I saw toilet paper and soap available. They said I came at the right time, as they’d just gotten one shipment in and most people have finally laid off the panic buying.
One of the women told me she lives in a town about sixty miles from here and the same pack of toilet paper I bought, she was charged $24.99 for at her local store. Yes, that is price gouging, and yes, it’s wrong. But she has kids at home and travels an hour each way to work, so what’s she gonna do about it? (I am reporting that store to the authorities, thank you very much.)
*****
TL;DR, things are very weird here.
The empty streets truly feel apocalyptic- even during slack the streets are filled with people walking about. Finding parking has always been a source of stress but now, every street and lot is open.
I normally walk everywhere because everything is within walking distance, but I am driving more than usual. Not because it’s easy to park, but because I *DO* worry a lot about unrelated injuries.
The speed limit through town is 20-25 mph. If I get in a wreck at that speed it’ll be survivable. If I am a pedestrian and get hit by a car at the same speed it would also be survivable (unfortunately, I have experience with this), but not if I can’t get care quickly, and right now I can’t get care quickly.
Someone did a hit and run on our parked car last week. The damage isn’t awful, but it’s bad enough that we’ll meet our deductible to repair it. We called the non emergency police dispatch when it happened and just yesterday a deputy showed up to file a report.
I know that it probably sounds incredibly privileged for people from other areas that I expect police, fire, and EMT services to be available within minutes, but this is still a small town and that’s just how it’s always been. I’ve never called 911, but have had to call non-emergency for small things several times and they’re always here within an hour, often much less.
One last weird thing and then I’ll wrap this up.
Usually when I tell people I live in Ketchum, there’s an eyeroll and assumption that I must be hoity toity. People not from here think that everyone who lives here is wealthy and pampered. While that is certainly true for a lot residents like Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, John Kerry, etc, it’s just not true for MOST residents. This is a service sector economy. It’s fueled by wait staff, grocery store clerks, ski lift attendants, hotel clerks and housekeepers, bartenders, etc.
This is a town where even married couples have roommates because there’s no other way to cover the rent, and like me, many of us take the ninety mile drive to the nearest WinCo because everything is too expensive here.
But people not from here don’t see that, they see the wealth and celebrities, the mansions along the river, and just assume only wealthy people live here so even if I’m on the phone, the eyeroll is audible.
In the last couple of weeks, that eyeroll has turned to a sympathetic gasp. As I’ve called my bank, car loan company, storage company, etc, I just have to say the magic words “I’m in Blaine County” and instead of an eyeroll, I get “Oh my gosh, we’re here to help.”
The payment deferments are nice! But I’d rather everyone in the state take this virus as seriously as Blaine County does.
Because we don’t have borders. The wages here are higher than anywhere else in the state so people will commute hours every day for a job that would be minimum wage anywhere else.
But the rest of the state seems to think this is our problem alone.
They don’t yet understand that we’re just the beginning.