Summit County, Utah is the home of Park City, the high-end ski resort.  Around the first of March, a wealthy visitor from San Francisco – someone with a second home in Park City or someone on a long-planned ski trip – came to Park City.  They were carrying the novel coronavirus.  They went for drinks one evening at The Spur Bar & Grill on Main Street.  This is a very popular and usually very crowded watering hole during ski season.  People line up outside.  A few days later, the doorman at the Spur became sick.  He did not have health insurance so was initially afraid to go to a doctor.  A couple of days later when he finally did see a doctor, he was not tested for covid-19.  He was told he had a chest cold and was sent home.  During this time, he continued to go to work at the (popular and crowded) Spur.  He’s an hourly employee with no sick leave.  If he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid.  This job is his only income.  There’s the formula for you:  A wealthy visitor lights a stick of dynamite by infecting someone with no sick leave and no health insurance.  Days later, the doorman returns to the doctor, is tested, and is found to be covid-19 positive.  But by now the disease is all through the Spur’s staff and in the families of the many Park City people who went to the Spur during the previous ten days.  So Park City and Summit County now have one of the highest per-capita rates of covid-19 infection in the country.  It only takes one privileged person.

The context in Utah is not very encouraging.  Utah has a Republican governor eager to please Donald Trump.  So he is one of only seven governors who have not yet issued a state-wide “stay at home” order.  But a local panic seems to have taken hold in Park City.  People in Park City do seem to be staying home whether there’s an order to or not.  In other parts of Utah that we’ve traveled through, we’ve seen much more traffic and more people seeming to be out eating, shopping, fishing, and playing volleyball.  And then there’s this:  After the Spur was closed, the owners had an industrial cleaning firm go into the place and spend two days cleaning and disinfecting it.  After that, the local health department gave the owners the okay to reopen the Spur.  Utah may be a bit too laissez-faire for us.  The owners – who also own the restaurant 350 Main next door – chose not to reopen and closed 350 Main as well.  There are now a lot of unemployed people in and around Park City with no incomes and no health insurance.  That’s a recipe for chaos.