2021 Year in Review: The COVID-19 Pandemic
The Laramie Reporter looks back at 2021. This is the fourth entry in a four-part series.
The COVID-19 pandemic continued into 2021, calming down somewhat after the 2020 early winter spike. Vaccines became widely available before a quiet summer in which “normal” activities resumed in Laramie. Residents were able to enjoy maskless gatherings and even Laramie Jubilee Days, but the highly contagious delta variant and the persistently low rate of vaccination contributed to a resurgence in the early fall that overwhelmed hospitals statewide.
Now, on the cusp of a new year, Laramie and the rest of Wyoming brace for an even more contagious strain of the virus.
The pandemic has been politicized since its inception. But the rampant division and partisanship that surround the issue reached a fever pitch in Laramie during the fall of 2021.
In Albany County, vaccination rates are low, masks are controversial, and misinformation is pervasive. The county is currently home to 53 confirmed active cases and has seen nearly 7,000 known cases since the pandemic began. At least 43 county residents have died since March 2020, though the majority of those deaths came in 2021.
Vaccination: Albany County is leading the state, but trailing the nation
Albany County has a vaccination rate significantly higher than the state average, in general and in every age category. But it lags behind national averages, resting as it does in one of the nation’s least vaccinated states.
In Albany County:
53.4% of the entire population is fully vaccinated (statewide: 43.3%)
22.8% of children aged 5-11 are fully vaccinated (statewide: 7.4%)
57.1% of adolescents aged 12-17 are fully vaccinated (statewide: 30.3%)
58.4% of adults aged 18 or older are fully vaccinated (statewide: 52.3%)
84.8% of seniors aged 65 or older are fully vaccinated (statewide: 73.5%)
In every age category, Teton County trumps Albany (with an 85 percent vaccination rate for its total population). In nearly every age category, Albany County is the second most vaccinated after Teton. The only exception: Albany County has the third highest rate of vaccinated adults, falling just behind Hot Springs County.
Albany County’s relatively high rate of vaccination is likely tied to its political lean. Red counties have lower rates of vaccination, higher case counts and — since vaccines became widely available — significantly more deaths than blue counties.
In the pre-vaccine stage of the pandemic, Albany County once led the state in case counts. Driven in part by partying University of Wyoming students, Albany was the first county to surpass 1,000 cases at a time when the number of active cases equaled one percent of the county’s population.
By the end of March, all Wyoming residents 16 and older were eligible for the vaccine. After an initial surge in vaccinations, the number of people getting vaccinated each day continued to drop until the rate basically plateaued in June. At that point, the state had hit a vaccination rate of about 30 percent, while Albany stalled out at just under 50 percent.
Hospitalizations ticked up slightly in June, but armed with the appropriate antibodies and informed by new CDC recommendations, vaccinated individuals enjoyed unmasked public gatherings in relative safety.
By late July, local government officials announced they were pushing for a 70 percent vaccination rate. The Laramie City Council and the Albany County Commission backed this goal and, together with community partners, launched an incentive program in August.
That program awarded gift cards for the newly vaccinated and paid out thousands to randomly drawn vaccinated individuals. (The Laramie Reporter highlighted those winners in English and Spanish.)
In October, unvaccinated individuals overwhelmed hospitals in Laramie, throughout Wyoming and across the west, causing elective surgeries to be delayed and cancelled. The death rate picked up significantly as the delta variant tore through Wyoming, killing more than 500 people in just October, November and December.
The deaths were overwhelmingly those of unvaccinated individuals.
Vaccinations ticked up slightly in Albany County, but remained far below the 70 percent goal.
The Wyoming Department of Health started recommending booster shots for specific populations in October and for the general population in November.
The Pfizer vaccine was approved for children aged 5-11, and some enthusiastically took part, but child vaccination rates remain low.
Masks: Local schools became a battleground for national debate
Facing low vaccination rates and high transmission levels, the Albany County School Board took action in August and September. The board instituted a mask mandate for students, employees and visitors on school grounds.
Some school board trustees cited the need to keep children safe — especially children who could not yet be vaccinated. Others said their goal was to keep kids in school where they learn best, and that masking would reduce not only transmission, but the number of people who must quarantine following a positive case.
But the decision to require masks inspired forceful and sometimes vicious pushback.
On the first day of September, anti-mask agitators shut down an Albany County School Board meeting by screaming, shouting, swearing and howling to drown out the voice of the public health officer who was speaking. Several stormed about the auditorium as they filled the air with angry noise.
School board trustees were forced to adjourn the meeting and reconvene virtually when it became clear that order could not be restored.
Meeting again the following week, the board had to adjourn once more when some public commenters refused to put on masks.
The mandate was passed despite these disruptions. The board voted once a month to continue its COVID-19 masking policy, but decided during its latest meeting to end the mandate. When students return to school in January, masks will be “strongly recommended” but not required.
While school board meetings grew less raucous throughout the semester, the battle over masking continued.
Laramie High School student Grace Smith was arrested on school grounds in early October. She had already been suspended twice for refusing to mask up. But following her third suspension, Smith refused to leave the premises and was cited for trespassing. Still refusing to leave, Smith was arrested as the school went on lockdown. At the time, several students said they feared a school shooting was in progress.
The student was immediately praised and promoted by right-wing politicians and media figures, including State Senator Anthony Bouchard (SD-06) and Steve Bannon, formerly Donald Trump’s Chief Strategist. She and her father made appearances in local, regional and national media and launched an online fundraiser.
That fundraiser blew past $75,000 in its first weekend and has now raised more than $140,000. That includes donations from Wyoming politician Taylor Haynes, State Rep. Ocean Andrew (HD-46) and likely University of Wyoming Police Chief Mike Samp. (Samp never replied to repeated requests for confirmation, but his name appears among the donors on GoFundMe, the fundraiser’s first home.)
Phone calls and emails containing “insults, vitriol, threats, and personal attacks” poured into Laramie, taking aim at school board members, the Laramie City Council and the Laramie Police Department. The incident at the high school also inspired some ill-fated legislation that failed alongside nearly every other bill written for the Wyoming Legislature’s Special Session.
In November, Grace Smith, her father and nine other parents across Wyoming brought a lawsuit alleging that the governor exaggerated the threat of COVID-19 and that school districts acted unconstitutionally by implementing mask mandates. The conspiratorial, misinformation-heavy lawsuit sues six school districts, one police department, state public health officials, various county health officers, the governor himself and 100 unnamed individuals that it doesn’t specify.
Various entities have moved to dismiss and several of those motions were granted last week. Two state health officials and five school districts — but not Albany County School District No. 1 — were released from a lawsuit the federal court called a ‘confused jumble.’
UW: Weathering delta, bracing for omicron
The University of Wyoming also passed a mask mandate, which was reapproved at each meeting of the Board of Trustees throughout the fall semester. Whereas university students contributed to a spike in cases during the fall of 2020 (and made Albany County temporarily Wyoming’s worst hotspot), case counts remained lower on campus during the fall of 2021.
Unlike some other universities across the nation, UW had no vaccine mandate for students coming to campus and the board has resisted the idea of requiring vaccines even for UW employees working in healthcare settings. It’s not clear what percentage of students are vaccinated.
The UW Cowboys Football Team, however, had a 96 percent vaccination rate by mid-August – possibly due to the fact that Coach Craig Bohl did not allow unvaccinated players to attend team meetings; unvaccinated players also had to eat alone in their rooms.
UW did require universal testing at the outset of the semester and will do so again when students return from winter break. The institution has kept up a campaign of random testing that will also continue into the new year. During the delta surge this fall, UW launched a series of educational videos; they were required viewing for all students and employees. The videos highlighted the science behind vaccines and masks, while making plain that the university would not reimburse tuition to students who got sick and failed out.
The university’s mask mandate has been extended to February amid concerns about the highly contagious omicron variant. The first confirmed case of omicron in the state was detected at UW. But support has waned throughout the semester and a few trustees have said they would like to end the mandate.
Student leadership has repeatedly stressed that the student body is largely supportive of the mask mandate. Staff leadership has said several employees will find it difficult to continue their jobs if the layer of protection offered by masks is dropped. And faculty leadership has added that instructors, especially those with immunocompromised family members, would like to see the mask mandate remain.