During 2020, I wrote a series of 25 Pandemic Reflections in the Kennebunk Post. It’s now been 12 months since that last column appeared, and I’d like again to task your patience, by occasionally sharing our mutual experiences, this pandemic’s impact on our lives, and exploring the changes which might be ahead for us.
For the past 18 months, we’ve been traveling together on what has seemed to have become a never-ending pandemic highway. Dan King photo
For the past 18 months, we’ve been traveling together on what has seemed to have become a never-ending pandemic highway. With early summer’s steep drop off in new cases, we came to believe that at last our journey’s end was near. That’s what the improving statistics and the GPS lady in the dash was signaling. We had begun watching for that eagerly welcome exit ramp sign, but instead, we caught sight in our rear-view mirror of a semi-truck named Delta, barreling down on us.
Maine and the other two northern New England states so far have weathered this pandemic better than our other sister states. It isn’t over yet, but for a small population state, we’ve paid a terrible price: 73,454 COVID cases, a total 2,221 hospitalizations, and 922 deaths (Aug. 20).
It soon became apparent that this wasn’t just a 90-day bout and that we were all in for the long haul, Maine quickly became a “sheltering sanctuary” for many of the refugees from the COVID “hot spots” to the south of us. Many of our summer residents reopened their summer homes and brought their families north for the duration. We welcomed them because they’re our neighbors.
Usually the first fall frost marks the start of the annual snow bird migration to points south. This year’s COVID news coming out of Florida and Texas convinced some of them to voluntarily clip their migratory wings. A fear of becoming trapped down there also helped in their decision-making.
For Maine snow birds, late fall means shutting down and packing up for the eventual fly-away date. As an ex-member of the flock, I know it had to be hard for these new stay-at-home-for-the-winter Mainers.
They needed to cancel the house security checks, order heating oil, lay in some firewood for any power outages, get a gym membership, trade their Florida sandals and flip flops for no-slip winter boots, and sign up for Netflix and Amazon Prime movie subscriptions.
The family car needed first time anti-freeze, a change over to winter-weight engine oil, and sticker-shock snow tires. Many were reminded by their spouses to check the owner’s manual “so we can find the heater switch and how to run the defroster. I told you we should have gotten those heated car seats!” Some males secretly logged on to YouTube for “how-to-drive on ice and snow” videos. They did luck out as this past winter was a snow-drought event.
We did enjoy seeing those normally rare Florida license plates sharing our winter roads with all the refugee New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut cars.
Given last winter’s experience, it’ll be interesting watching our snow birds this upcoming winter. They’ll either sheltered safely here or tough it out down south. Will they continue their annual migration or decide to leave the flock? The catastrophic condo building collapse last month at Surfside and the currently raging Delta surge in Florida may make that “here or there” decision a little easier to make.
These past 18 months, with its ups and downs and too many surprise curves thrown at us, have been both a dramatically scary and chilling stretch that a newspaper friend has compared to a never-ending roller-coaster ride.
The first Maine cases appeared in early March, 2020, and after our state’s first death, Governor Mills shut Maine down on the eve of the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. By spring, new daily cases peaked at 800 and slowly dropped to less than 100 new cases a day.
Then in late fall, 2020, the second wave, just in time to crush our Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, with new cases peaking at 800, followed by a glacier-like decline to the 100 to 200 daily range.
This past spring 2021, our third wave rose to a 60-case peak, followed by a hopeful slide down to double-digit numbers, dropping as low as the teens. At this moment, when it looked as if we had broken the back of this pandemic, that’s when Delta, the COVID-variant, the fourth wave appeared in our rear-view mirror and we sped, pedal to the floor, past the Exit Ramp sign. We’re now in a range of 125 to 300 new daily cases and the masks are going back on.
On the brighter, more hopeful side, Maine Health, Northern Light, and the Maine CDC have partnered in one of the most successful COVID-vaccine programs in the country. Despite the challenges of small cities and a mostly rural population in New England’s largest state, 831,570 (Aug. 20), 61.75 percent of residents have been fully vaccinated.
We received our second Pfizer shots in February and March at the Scarborough Downs mass vaccination site. There was no waiting and the process went like clockwork with the assistance of the Maine National Guard and a host of friendly and efficient volunteers.
The RN walked us through the shot, alerting us beforehand to any possible side effects. We left with a feeling similar to that when we leave our voting polling place. We had done the right thing. After a year full of so much uncertainty, it was a serene, now much safer feeling. Unlike earlier generations of betters who had come to that Scarborough Downs race track, everyone this year walked away a winner.
We’ve learned over the last 18 months, that no one has a crystal ball that can peer into the future. We’re determined, though, while we’re on this pandemic roller coaster ride, we’re going to keep taking all the necessary precautions, masking up again, and signing up for the booster shot when it becomes available in September, so we can finally and safely maybe take that exit ramp.
Tom Murphy is a retired history teacher and state representative. He is a Kennebunk Landing resident and can be reached at tsmurphy@myfairpoint.net.
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