On March 12, President Wippman announced that Hamilton would be shifting to online instruction after spring break. I called my mom in tears. Like many of my peers, I had a sinking feeling that there wouldn’t be a temporary two-week stint of “remote learning” before life returned to normal. But the coronavirus hadn’t felt like a real threat until this point, and I still had a spring break flight booked to San Diego to visit some friends. When I asked my mom if I should go, she asked: “Where do you feel safest?”
I broke down. “Home,” I said. “I feel safest at home.”
Home
was rural Idaho. On March 12, there were no cases in my county, or, for that matter, in the entire state. I booked tickets. Within the hour, my friends and I had plans to hang out when I got back. We understood that the epidemic was spreading dangerously fast in New York, Seattle, San Francisco — we just never thought the need for quarantine would reach us, as isolated and rural as we were.
But by the next day, the first case was confirmed in Idaho. Since it wasn’t in my county, life at home went on as normal as I waited anxiously for my flight back to my family. Then, the first two cases were announced in my hometown. By the time I flew into Boise on March 18th there were five cases, but within 24 hours, that number nearly quadrupled. My county was then placed under lockdown by the governor. By the end of March,
The
New York Times
reported that Blaine County had beat out Westchester to earn the highest number of coronavirus cases per resident in the nation.
How did this happen? The answer makes me naïve to have ever hoped that my hometown would remain untouched by the virus. My county is rural, yes, but it is also home to the world-famous Sun Valley ski resort. At the time of the outbreak, the resort happened to be on the tail end of a beautiful season plentiful with tourists from across the country. The closest guess as to how coronavirus reached my home is a wedding held a week before the first cases were reported, staffed by locals, for a couple from Seattle. But the truth is that it could have arrived in any one of the visitors who flocked to the resort throughout February and March.
This story is not unique to Sun Valley. As my parents and I refreshed
The
New York Times
’s list of counties most affected by the virus, we recognized the names of fellow resorts: Park City, Utah, Vail, Colorado. According to
The
Guardian
, tourism brought higher rates of coronavirus infection to “rural counties with recreation economies,” much faster than they were prepared for. Like the other rural counties that are now being hit hard in what
CNN
’s Kent Sepkowitz called America’s “fourth wave,” towns like mine often only have one ICU bed. Emergencies require helicopter flights to medical centers hundreds of miles away. It’s easy to see how such fragile ecosystems of healthcare can become overwhelmed under the weight of a pandemic whose spread does not have mercy on even the most isolated areas.
Even as my town begins to slowly open up again, we know nothing will ever be the same. It’s unclear whether or not the resort will be able to open its doors next year. Certainly this summer will be different — no weddings, no influx of travel-happy vacationers, none of the several international conferences held annually at Sun Valley. With an economy rooted in tourism, the future of Blaine County, for the short term at least, is looking pretty grim. Businesses will close. Restaurants will flounder. Growth will undoubtedly slow. The same holds true for every other “recreation economy” that has had to beg their wealthy, economy-boosting, second-home-owning summer tenants to stay away.
Rural counties, meanwhile, continue to struggle. As bigger cities slowly move past the peak of infection, coronavirus is beginning its spread across rural America. Though New York has undoubtedly been hit the hardest,
The
New York Times
’s list of counties with the highest infection rate per resident is dominated instead by counties in midwestern states: Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa. Each of these states only has cases numbering in the hundreds, but given their small populations, the rate of infection remains remarkably high. While parts of the country may be letting out sighs of relief that the worst is over, for many rural towns like mine, the pandemic is just beginning — and it threatens to overwhelm.
In a few days, Idaho’s official stay-at-home order expires. Here, things are coming back to life. There are more cars on the highway. Businesses prepare to reopen on May 1st. At the grocery stores, people have stopped wearing masks. Many feel that the threat of coronavirus has ended for our tiny pocket of the world, just as quickly as it came. But if the last two months have shown us anything, it should be that we are just as vulnerable as the rest of the country, if not more so. The future is uncertain, for resorts, for rural counties, for everyone. We should move forward, yes, but we should do so tentatively — wearing the proper protective equipment and carrying what overpriced hand sanitizer we can find.
