Covid battle between counties
I live in Northern Colorado in Larimer county, which has actively taken measures to mitigate the pandemic. Just east of us is Weld county, which has about the same population, but it is far more rural since it's half again as big as we are. Wearing a mask out in that county is very rare, and there's no social distancing, restrictions on gatherings, etc. Last spring, they had double the number of cases than we did and 3 times the number of deaths.
This fall, the Weld County Sheriff announced that he will never enforce any CDC guidelines or orders from the governor. All the while, Larimer County and Boulder County to the south of us are still following guidelines, and at least the urban areas are enforcing the Governor's orders.
Now, one of the ways being used to measure how an area is doing with Covid is track how many available hospital beds and especially ICU beds are still available. So to make their numbers look better, Weld county counted all of the available hospital and ICU beds in Northern Colorado.
For obvious reasons, this hasn't gone over so well with Weld County's neighbors. In fact, the Mayor and City Council in the small city of Longmont in Boulder County has said that if their hospitals start approaching capacity, they will turn away patients from counties that have failed to take measures to mitigate the pandemic. Of course, Longmont's decision immediately made the evening news.
It's already getting ugly out here, and we're only in the second week of December.
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