Celebrities are fleeing urban coronavirus hotspots for quarantining in Wyoming, Montana, and other Western rural regions. Experts are criticizing this move as dangerous to those who live in those areas year-round. Fearing their relocation may cause added stress to an already severely limited healthcare infrastructure.
These include celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, and Kelly Clarkson to name a few.
“These moves have been a huge concern for us,” Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of NRHA, told NBC News. “It’s such a bad idea for upper-income urban people to hunker down in these areas. It potentially places added pressure on a health care system that was for primary care and general surgery, not for pandemic surge response.”
Morgan said that as of Friday afternoon, there are more than 16,000 cases of coronavirus scattered across rural counties nationally. Hospitals in these areas have one to two ventilators on site on average, he said. More than half of the rural counties in the United States have no intensive care beds at all.
Celebs moving to the countryside
Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were the most recent celebrities to come under fire for the phenomenon. Some have branded “disaster gentrification” after Timberlake recently revealed that the couple has settled into their home in the Yellowstone Club. It’s a 15,200-acre private community west of Gallatin County, to wait out the coronavirus outbreak. Kelly Clarkson has also decamped to her Montana ranch during the pandemic.
“To be honest, we thought the best way to kind of do our part was. We have a place in Montana and so, we came up here,” Timberlake said in an interview with SiriusXM Hits1 on Wednesday.
Travel from urban centers spreading coronavirus to rural areas
Gallatin County is among the top 10 rural counties with the highest reported COVID-19 cases, according to data obtained by NBC News from NRHA. In comparison to the surge of cases, there are currently eight ICU beds available in the country. There’s just one for every 2,141 residents aged 60+, according to Kaiser Health News.
“In Utah, in Colorado, all around the country, we’re hearing the same stories,” Morgan said. “People are moving into these understaffed, underfunded areas that are tinderboxes for the outbreak. Many of the populations in these communities are exactly those who are least equipped to get the virus. Basically older, sicker people with preexisting conditions who can’t afford to be exposed to it.”
Coronavirus Data
Jessica Carson, a research assistant public policy professor at the University of New Hampshire, recently conducted a rapid response project that appears to corroborate Morgan and the NRHA’s assessment that continued travel from those who do not live in rural communities is causing the spread of COVID-19.
After analyzing data from the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and the U.S. Census Bureau, Carson determined that the nation …
