CDC moves goalposts again, new magic has Teton in Yellow now
Health Department updates dashboard and guidance to align with CDC's COVID-19 community risk levels
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — A big part of what makes following CDC pandemic protocol so frustrating is the shifting recommendations, the meandering guidelines. It gives the impression the agency is building the plane as it flies it.
On Friday February 25, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its framework yet again for how COVID-19 risk levels are determined for each community. The Teton County Health Department has interpreted this new framework as “focused on community risk levels with hopes to minimize the impacts of severe COVID-19 illness on a community while protecting those who are the most vulnerable.” This, compared to the old framework “that focused on transmission risk levels.”
If that isn’t a load of government-speak gobbledygook.
The CDC has even fidgeted with the basic color scheme we’ve all grown used to seeing plastered on the cover of the Jackson Hole Daily, for instance. Orange is now the new red. Red, after all, conveys the kind of ‘scariness’ that is no longer necessary. My, how far we’ve come from the dark ages January 2021) when red was too wussy for Teton County health officials who saw fit to add their own ‘purple’ to the COVID color fear spectrum.
The new iteration of CDC framework has three levels of risk, low (green), medium (yellow), and high (orange).
This new framework incorporates three metrics:
- New cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days,
- New hospital admissions with confirmed COVID-19 per 100,000 population over the last 7 days, and
- The percent of inpatient beds occupied with COVID-19 patients averaged over the last 7 days.
Based on data for these new metrics, the CDC reports Teton County’s current COVID-19 risk level is medium (yellow).
The CDC is also updating its recommendations for indoor mask wearing and no longer recommends universal indoor mask wearing in K-12 and childcare settings when the COVID-19 community level is low or medium. Every school in Wyoming, and pretty much all schools in the country, has already ended mask mandates.
With these changes, the Teton County District Health Officer is rescinding Recommendation #12, which recommends mask wearing in specific situations.
