Country folks fear city virus
OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Some city folk have been fleeing to their second homes in resort areas to ride out the coronavirus outbreak near the beach or the ski slopes. But neighbors in many of those places are yanking the welcome mat — fearing infection and the overwhelming of already stretched resources in sleepy shore and mountain communities.
In southern New Jersey, Cape May County Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton asked summer homeowners, who make up nearly half the property owners, to stay away for at least two weeks.
“Because the children are out of school, people are taking that as an opportunity to go to the shore,” he said Wednesday. “Instead of a national emergency, they're taking it like an additional vacation.”
Thornton said a quarter of the county is 60 or older — and thus particularly vulnerable to the virus.
“We don't know where these people are coming from or who they've been exposed to,” he said. “We got reports today that someone from New York who was exposed to the virus came down here, and now we're investigating whether he's positive.”
An hour later, officials announced that the man, a 30-yearold New Yorker, had indeed tested positive, and was the first confirmed case of the virus in the county. That led the county's director of nursing to issue another request for visitors to stay away.
Similar debates are raging in many shore and mountain towns.
One Maine island that is reachable only by boat or plane barred part-time residents from the island — before backtracking and simply “strongly” encouraging them to stay away, for their health and the health of North Haven's full-time residents.
In Ocean City, N.J., which has a large percentage of summer residents and draws vacationers from Philadelphia and New York, resident Melissa Wahl said there was not a single piece of meat available at a local supermarket Wednesday morning.
“The cashier who checked me out said she had been seeing a lot of out-of-towners,” she said. “People are afraid of them bringing in this virus and our hospital not having the ability to handle all of the influx.”
During the outbreak, business has more than doubled at the Winhall Market near Stratton Mountain Ski Resort in southern Vermont, as residents of New York and Boston pour in. Locals aren't thrilled as they watch items selling out at the small market and fear that out-of-staters could be bringing the virus with them.
“They're really hoarding everything,” market owner Lorraine Neuhaus said.
Valencia, Spain, has closed its beaches to prevent people fleeing the virus from coming there, and leading to a reverse migration away from the shore.
In the U.S., Point Pleasant Beach, which has one of New Jersey's most popular boardwalks, is trying a similar tactic, urging people not to walk on it for the foreseeable future.
“While fresh air and spending time outside is positive, the narrow boardwalk will force people to be in proximity to each other, thus negating all attempts to adhere to social distancing,” Police Chief Joseph Michigan said.
Cailin Sandvig and her husband, Justin Bracken, left their Brooklyn apartment last Monday, packing their 10-month-old twins, Milo and Aurelia, into the family car along with baby supplies and a week's worth of clothing for themselves. They were heading to Wheaton, Ill., where Sandvig's mother lives by herself in a four-bedroom house.
Practicing social distancing in Brooklyn would mean keeping the twins inside their small apartment, and that would be untenable since they're crawling and almost walking.
“To keep them in a room where they have at most 10 feet of distance is a nightmare,” she said.