LOOKING BACK: HOPE AMID COVID’S TERROR
We top off 2020 off with the year’s top five stories in mid-michigan
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re counting down the top mid-michigan stories of 2020 as determined by online pageviews. Our top story for 2020 was COVID-19. Here were five angles from how the pandemic affected life in mid-michigan.)
5. COVID-19 arrives
As soon as news broke that COVID-19 was in Michigan, preparations to handled it started at local healthcare networks. New entry procedures were adopted to prevent the mingling of Covid-positive people with others in patient waiting areas, and testing resources were rolled out.
The early days were marked by scarcity in testing supplies, and they were reserved largely for people in front-line jobs like public safety and for people in at-risk populations like elderly people with chronic health issues.
People began to test positive, however, and the virus made its way into the Isabella County Medical Care Facility, the first nursing home outbreak in the region.
The early days were also marked by a closing of businesses and an order from the governor that people stay at home unless it was necessary for them to buy groceries, go to work or participate in solo outdoor exercise.
Locally, cases continued to increase throughout April and then started to decline as the impact of those orders and warmer weather arrived, allowing people to go outside where spread of the disease is rare.
4. Late fall surge
For much of the summer, as cases of COVID-19 remained low, health experts
warned that cooler temperatures would bring a new wave of cases. The SARS- COV-2 virus spreads most easily in cool, dry temperatures and especially inside.
Winter’s cold, combined with the fact that people congregate inside to avoid it, made for a perfect breeding grounds. Cases went up across mid-michigan, and with it came an increase in the number of outbreaks in congregate living facilities.
At Central Michigan Correctional Facility, in St. Louis, more than 75 percent of its 2,600 inmates tested positive; and an outbreak at a Farwell nursing home ended in the deaths of 12 residents.
Cases continued to climb throughout mid-Michigan through November, and started to decline as stricter gathering restrictions were placed across the state.
3. Businesses
Restaurants were the hardest hit businesses, both from state orders that they close and also a lack of confidence in the safety of dining out during case surges.
Federal help steered most of them through the first lockdown, and they reopened to limited- capacity indoor dining in late spring. During the summer, local restaurants tried their hand at outdoor dining with picnic tables, and Broadway in downtown Mt. Pleasant was closed to car traffic to provide a place for people to eat takeout.
Some restaurants that closed remained closed. Mt. Pleasant lost the Italian Oven, Ponderosa, Ruby Tuesday and Tiki Pineapple early on, although the pandemic probably just provided a push for their permanent closure. Roz’s Diner, a popular Rosebush eatery, never reopened to in-person dining.
When cases started to increase statewide during November, restaurants felt the pinch all over again as people started dining at home. Then came another shutdown order.
The difference was that the first shutdown was accompanied by federal aid in the form of the Paycheck Protection Program, low-interest and forgivable loans. Political squabbling in Washington D.C., exacerbated by a contentious but fraud-free Presidential election, delayed similar aid.
2. Schools
As cases went’ into decline over the summer, staff at local schools — including Central Michigan University and Alma College — prepared for the return to classes in late August.
The process proved to be highly controversial in some districts, where administrators were accused of crafting plans outside of public scrutiny. Most districts offered both in-person and online options for students.
CMU was the first school that returned for instruction in mid-august. Its return was marked by high compliance among students on campus, but not so much off of it. Reports of large gatherings in local apartment complexes and in fraternity/sorority houses were followed by a surge of cases in Isabella County. Although it accounted for the largest number of new confirmed cases in mid-michigan at the time, it also produced few hospitalizations and no deaths.
Local schools saw few outbreaks traced back to school property. Most school-reported cases were employees or students who contracted the disease off campus and were reported in local numbers. Health officials cited the summertime preparations and rigorous adherence to them as the reason.
In November, of course, with cases surging statewide, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered in- person learning for all of Michigan’s high schools to end on Nov. 16.
1. Nursing homes
Congregate care facilities proved to be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. While the vast majority of people recovered pretty quickly from the disease, it proved lethal in nursing homes.
Early on, people tried to hang nursing home deaths on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s policy of allowing nursing home residents to return to their homes if the facility had the resources to staff an isolation wing.
That wasn’t supported by facts, and eventually the Legislature codified the program into law.
What caused most nursing home outbreaks was spread of the disease within the community. A member of the staff would be exposed to the disease and unwittingly take it to work, where it spread to residents and other employees.
Mid- Michigan’s first nursing home outbreak was in the Isabella County Medical Care Facility. Another hit Masonic Pathways health care center in Gratiot County.
During the late fall wave, successively large outbreaks hit North Woods Nursing Center in Farwell, Medilodge facilities in Clare and Mt. Pleasant, Masonic Pathways health care center (again) and The Laurels of Fulton. A combined 94 people were infected during the outbreak at Medilodge of Mt. Pleasant, 66 of them residents.