Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
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JACKSON — If things don’t turn around, Wyoming could have more than 150 deaths from the coronavirus by February, according to a well-known model. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington maintains a model that predicts coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in countries around the world. Though it is just one model and therefore is subject to whatever biases are in the data used, scientists, elected officials and news outlets have employed the institute’s projections to understand the poten...
JACKSON — One group is taking the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak in Teton County, and it’s not young people. Though Latinos make up just 15% of the county’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 estimates, they account for 32% of local COVID-19 cases since March. That number has been even more pronounced in recent weeks, rising to 57% of the cases from Aug. 25 to Sept. 7. “That is very overrepresented for the Latinx community,” Teton County Director of Health Jodie Pond told county commissioners Aug. 31. If the coronavirus...
JACKSON - Eighty-eight days. That's how long Anthony Parker spent in the hospital. He first felt sick with symptoms that didn't mirror a typical cold or flu on March 30. "The last thing I remember, I drove myself to this hospital," the 61-year-old Jackson man said, sitting in the shade outside St. John's Health. "I couldn't sleep. And I said, 'Well, I gotta go see what's wrong.'" Parker finally left the hospital on June 25, ending a three-month saga with coronavirus in which he was transferred...
JACKSON — The Wyoming Department of Education has extra time to deal with a large public records request sent at the end of November. Rock Springs Republican Sen. Tom James asked all state government departments for information on their employees, specifically names, titles and salaries. The original deadline for fulfilling the request was Dec. 27, but state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow told James in an email that she needed an extension due to employee privacy concerns. She said some employees could be put in danger if t...
JACKSON — High fives to our healthy Wyoming kids. According to a report released Oct. 3 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Wyoming’s children are some of the thinnest in the country. In 2017 and 2018, the years covered in the report, just 11.8% of kids in the state qualified as obese, below the national rate of 15.3%. Wyoming has the 10th lowest obesity rate in the nation, following mostly Western states. Utah has the lowest at 8.7%, while Mississippi has the highest rate at 25.4%. The report cites mixed reviews about the country as who...
JACKSON — Title X funding is no more in Teton County. The Teton County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to withdraw from the federal program, which provides grants for family planning and related preventative services for low-income and uninsured people. Title X funding has become a political lightning rod after a new rule went into effect that limits the types of medical referrals providers can make, colloquially deemed an “abortion gag rule.” While providers at Title X facilities can offer abortion counseling, they...
JACKSON — The Wyoming Department of Health wants to make air ambulance travel cheaper for everyone. Officials have drafted a waiver application to send to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asking to change air ambulance travel regulations. Essentially they want to treat air ambulance service like a utility, extending the service at Medicaid prices to everyone, regardless of age, income level or location by creating a type of regulated monopoly. “We’re trying to fix the free market,” said Franz Fuchs, a Health Department policy...
JACKSON — Sitting around a campfire is the stereotypical camping activity: Flames lick the logs, someone roasts marshmallows while bats and nighthawks swoop around, eating mosquitoes. For Ashley Pipkin that very scene in a Targhee National Forest campsite turned less than pastoral Aug. 10 when a bat either fell onto her from a tree or flew into her neck in the dark. She reacted involuntarily. “I grabbed it with my hand,” she said, “then it bit me on the hand and I threw it on the ground.” The presumably frightened, shaken critter scuttled...
JACKSON — Thomas Spatafore worked as a seasonal weed technician for Teton County Weed and Pest for a decade. By all accounts, he enjoyed the job and was good at it, moving up the ranks to lead his own crew, including on an important contract with the National Elk Refuge. The summer job had a crucial perk: free housing, which for at least a few seasons was a one-bedroom apartment he didn’t have to share. As an added bonus, because he returned each summer Weed and Pest allowed him to stay over the winters with a monthly rental payment far below m...
JACKSON — Between Devil’s Tower and the South Dakota state line, along a pine-covered hillside, sits Aladdin, population 15. Father-son duo Maynard and Lee Rude own most of the town, including its mobile-home park, gas station and 125-year-old mercantile. Like a lot of Wyoming border towns, Aladdin, especially its general store, survives on out-of-towners spending their money there. Unlike other towns, which might eke out existences on outdoor recreation tourism, Aladdin benefits from the sale of a particular product: tobacco. “They have good...