How COVID‑19 changed everything
Few could have predicted at this time last year that a microscopic virus originating more than 6,500 miles away from Tuolumne County in Wuhan, China, would have such an impact on the lives of everyone in the community.
The year will be etched in history and in the minds of those who lived through it for the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to sweeping changes throughout the world that would have been unthinkable before March.
However, 2021 will begin with a sign of hope in the form of vaccines that are expected to be available to anyone who wants it by the end of the year.
Dr. Eric Sergienko, the county’s interim health officer, said he’s optimistic for a return to “something closer to normal” by Dec. 31, 2021.
“The gray area will be six to seven months from now what we’ll be
doing, but a year from now, things will be approaching normal or what we used to think of as normal,” he said.
Sergienko first briefed the county Board of Supervisors about the virus on March 3 after stepping into the role of interim health officer, at a time when Tuolumne and all of its surrounding counties had no reported cases.
The county’s first confirmed case was announced on the morning of March 26 in a news release put out by County Administrator Tracie Riggs, who said she had been working with Sergienko and other local partners for weeks on protocols to prevent the spread of the disease if anyone tested positive.
“Last night, the board and I were notified of a confirmed case,” she said in the statement.
However, the virus had already at that point upended the previous sense of normal in the county.
A story published in The Union Democrat on March 12 reported on the first two cases appearing in Calaveras County that increased the fear of spread and led to the cancellation of dozens of events planned in the Mother Lode through the end of that month and beginning of April.
On March 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued what is said to be the nation’s first statewide stayat-home order that forced businesses deemed as nonessential to shutter and schools to revert to distance learning.
Frustration among some in the community grew over the government’s response to the pandemic as the county’s case rate remained relatively low for months, with the county recording fewer than 20 cases prior to a spike beginning in late June that swelled the total to 144 by the start of August. Then, came the deaths.
The county’s first two coronavirus-related deaths were reported together on July 27, and it wasn’t until Sept. 8 that a third was announced.
Five more people in the county died from the virus through early November, until a second major spike in cases began in the middle of that month that was tied to gatherings of people around Halloween.
Cases among the county’s general population outside of the Sierra Conservation Center state prison in Jamestown skyrocketed 292 at the start of November to 1,813 as of Tuesday.
An additional 13 people in the county died from the virus this month alone, including beloved community leaders such as former California Highway Patrol Commander Mike Ayala, dermatologist Dr. Gary Wright, and longtime coach and youth sports referee Griff Low.
The death toll throughout the United States had exceeded 341,000 as of Wednesday, more than five times the number of people who died during the country’s worst flu season in modern history from 2017 to 2018, which itself was more than five times as many Americans as the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
“There’s really no comparison,” Sergienko said of COVID-19 versus the typical flu season and other modern pandemics.
Measures taken in an attempt to suppress the spread of the disease have also taken profound economic toll on people and businesses throughout the world.
Tuolumne County’s unemployment rate peaked at 17.2% in April, which exceeded the worst month of the Great Recession from 2008 to 2010. The rate has since come down to 7.4% in November, but that was still nearly double what it was for the same month in 2019.
It’s unknown exactly how many businesses in the county have been forced to shutter permanently as a result of the pandemic, but the casualties include some longtime local favorites like Mike’s Mowers
“Thirty five years and eight months, this company has been through droughts, fires, recessions, heat waves, wind and snow storms,” Mike Krom, owner of Mike’s Mowers, wrote in a letter to customers announcing the impending closure on Dec. 23. “We made it through all except for this one.”
While the next year will hopefully begin a transition back to normalcy thanks to rapid development of vaccines aided by outgoing President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed program, Sergienko said 2021 will likely be a year of recovery.
“You have both the long-term (health) effects of COVID that are just being determined, and then you have the economic impacts,” he said. “We’ll have to recover from all that.”
The first 775 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine and 100 doses of Moderna’s vaccine arrived in the county earlier this month and have been distributed to health care workers and nursing home patients who are part of the “Phase 1a” group.
Sergienko didn’t have the exact date or amount of doses for the next shipment, which will go first to the remaining people in “Phase 1a,” but the next phase will include people 75 and older, people 65 to 74 with underlying medical conditions, and frontline essential workers, such as firefighters, law enforcement, food and agriculture workers, and teachers.
Though a state advisory committee is still working on the distribution process, people recommended for “Phase 1c” include anyone 65 or older and people 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions that make them more vulnerable.
“We’ll have to figure out a registration process and how to distribute and to make sure the people follow the template,” he said.
However, the biggest concern for Sergienko is what happens in the county over the next two months as he anticipates the number of cases will likely increase due to holiday travel and gatherings.
Sergienko urged people to maintain vigilance by continuing to practice social distancing, frequent hand washing, and wearing masks, even after they’ve been vaccinated until it’s known whether that will reduce the ability for people to transmit the highly contagious disease.
“Continue doing these things, but the next two months will be tough,” he said.