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In the town where RuPaul fracks, Covid-19 is out of control. Unemployment and food bank demand is up, and contract tracers are overwhelmed. It's a portrait of what Wyoming is becoming: a getaway for the superrich that leaves its resident behind. My latest: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wyoming-covid-surge-struggling-energy-economy-thriving-haven-rich-n1247839
So much of this has to do with the energy companies, that come into small towns and create jobs, but pick up and leave once prices drop. It's the communities that feel the effects, not the corporations. It's unsustainable in every sense of the word. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wyoming-covid-surge-struggling-energy-economy-thriving-haven-rich-n1247839
As the companies flee Wyoming, the rich are fleeing TO Wyoming. In Jackson Hole, on the country's most unequal cities, $1.5 billion in real estate was spent in just the first nine months of 2020 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wyoming-covid-surge-struggling-energy-economy-thriving-haven-rich-n1247839
Meanwhile, public health officials in rural and frontier counties are under resourced and hospitals can't handle a surge. If you're get sick on luxury ranch, you just go to a private doctor. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wyoming-covid-surge-struggling-energy-economy-thriving-haven-rich-n1247839
Many thanks to Justin Farrell, a professor and Wyoming native who gave me a lot of insight. His book dives much deeper into the topic, especially about how the interior West is imagined and the romanticization of rural poverty. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691176673/billionaire-wilderness
