Originally published on May 3, 2021 2:32 pm
Inside Eastridge Shopping Mall in Casper, Wyoming was once a Macy s. And signs of that department store life remain a lot of mirrors, the old beauty department counter, and what used to be changing rooms to try on the latest fashions. Now, this building is a well-oiled, pandemic-fighting machine, with no customers.
Listen / If you re just out doing your thing and think, Well, I have a spare 30 minutes, I could go get my vaccine. Come on down. We re happy to do it, said Hailey Bloom. She s with the Casper-Natrona County Health Department.
When the agency converted this building into a COVID-19 vaccine clinic, it estimated it would be capable of vaccinating up to 1,500 people a day.
The Casper-Natrona County Department Health Department s COVID Vaccine Center at the Eastridge Mall.
Inside Eastridge Shopping Mall in Casper, Wyoming was once a Macy s. And signs of that department store life remain a lot of mirrors, the old beauty department counter, and what used to be changing rooms to try on the latest fashions. Now, this building is a well-oiled, pandemic-fighting machine, with no customers. If you re just out doing your thing and think, Well, I have a spare 30 minutes, I could go get my vaccine. Come on down. We re happy to do it, said Hailey Bloom. She s with the Casper-Natrona County Health Department.
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Before the pandemic hit, not many people knew each county had a public health officer or what they did exactly. Natrona County Public Health Officer Dr. Mark Dowell has been in that position since the late 1990s. I would oversee sexually transmitted disease clinics. I would do immigration physicals. We would look at reproductive planning, these kinds of things, Dowel described.
But all of that changed when the pandemic hit. Public health employees all of the sudden were on the front line of the fight. It was endless phone calls, endless hours, endless types of stress, and huge policy making decisions right on the fly, said Dowell. And having to do all the meetings with public officials, trying to convince people that the public health policies were the way to go for our county, and having to be in the media a lot, and having my life threatened.
Natrona School Board Narrowly Votes to Keep Masks in Schools
Trustees Kyla Alvey, Rita Walsh, Kianna Smith and Debbie McCullar voted for the variance.
Trustees Clark Jenson, Thomas Myler, Dave Applegate, Dana Howie and Board Chairman Raymond Catellier voted against.
During the school board meeting, the results of a survey that asked parents and staff whether they wanted the mandate or not was shared.
It showed that, among the 4,537 respondents, 80% of parents and 75% of staff wanted the mask mandate gone.
Of the 19% of parents that wanted to keep the mandate, the survey asked if they would or would not keep their children in school, with 23%, or 205, saying they would not.
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