That’s not to say that they were off the record. I just generated a bunch of notes that I haven’t sifted through yet and don’t want to put up yet.

At noon, I sat in on a meeting of the Moab Chamber of Commerce for a discussion about recent hiring difficulties. Lots of local businesses have experienced difficulty hiring in recent months, and many of them blame the lack of housing availability.

After that, I talked with Laici Shumway, the executive director of the chamber. about the same subject. We went through more of the details and some of the peripheral issues at hand — transportation, generous unemployment insurance payouts, and more.

Housing clearly is the focus point of local businesses, though. I am working on the story with Sophia Fisher, who is a freelancer for the newspaper.

Later in the day, I talked with Southeast Utah Health Department Director Brady Bradford about the current state of the pandemic in Moab, the state of vaccinations, and whether we will ever reach herd immunity.

I came out of the conversation feeling… fine about the current state of things in Moab.

The biggest thing that I got out of it was a reminder that not everyone can get the vaccine, so not everyone who wants the same level of protection as me can get it, and those people rely in large part on protection by society at large rather than a vaccine in their own arm.