Life at a distance
Around Santa Fe, residents coping with quiet anxiety of COVID-19 outbreak
It’s the usual sights, set against the backdrop of an unusual time, that play up the surreal and unsettling nature of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The flashing lights still cautioning motorists to avoid driving fast in school zones.
The lack of vehicles in acres-big parking lots, where business and commerce once thrived.
The sparse, intermittent traffic on city streets, with cars and trucks so far apart they look like they’re practicing their own form of social distancing.
Welcome to 2020 and COVID-19, a combination that’s finally sinking in throughout Santa Fe.
Just ask Jim Perry, 61, who was playing with his dogs Zeus and Molly at Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park on Wednesday morning. Perry is avoiding people. Not only is he hesitant to visit his family members, including a grandson in Albuquerque, because of the need to socially distance to help stem the spread of the virus; he also had to postpone a heart operation after the hospital canceled it.
“They’ve got other stuff to deal with first,” he said. “Coronavirus.”
On top of all that, he said COVID-19 cost him his first date in years.
“We were supposed to go out to lunch two weeks ago on Thursday, but now we can’t,” Perry said. “Just my luck, huh?”
For retiree Alan Peura, closures caused by the novel coronavirus have kept him from the museums, parks and other businesses he would otherwise frequent. That’s led him to improvise, meaning more huffing, puffing and pedaling with his bike along the Santa Fe Rail Trail.
But with family members living in large urban centers like Philadelphia and Seattle, Peura, 59, said he has become more “anxious” about the crisis, “both health
wise and for the economy.” And he can’t go visit loved ones for fear of exposure.
Peura said he believes “we’ll bounce back” but acknowledges it’s imperative citizens follow the government’s public health directives — staying home, avoiding congregating with groups of more than five people, washing hands often and staying at least 6 feet away from anyone you encounter.
“People give you a wide berth,” he said. “I do the same.”
And it’s that space that has become a key topic in the state.
According to data analytics company Unacast, New Mexico residents are among the worst in the nation at staying within their homes. The company analyzed movement based on GPS coordinates from cellphones, and found the state is in the bottom five nationally when it comes to reducing the average distance traveled since the coronavirus outbreak. Perhaps not surprisingly, the other states — Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — have large land areas.
The company sells data analysis based on anonymous cellphone device location and map data to companies that might find it profitable. Descartes Labs of Santa Fe, meanwhile, ranked
New Mexico slightly higher but still placed the state in the bottom half of all U.S. states for the amount of distance traveled during the pandemic.
One thing most people now have in common are trips to the grocery store, though many food outlets are struggling to find a way to keep patrons at a safe distance from each other and workers.
The Trader Joe’s store on West Cordova Road is limiting the number of shoppers in the facility to 50 at a time, a worker standing at the front door Wednesday morning said. She said the store has only opened “every other cashier line” to limit closeness and is encouraging patrons to follow the 6-foot separation rule.
A Trader Joe’s spokesman did not return a call for comment.
Meanwhile, at Market Street on North Guadalupe Street, most shoppers were keeping an obvious distance from one another both in the aisles and in the cashier lines.
But one cashier said this practice had only started a few days ago “when the number of cases went up.”
Nancy Sharp, a spokeswoman for Market Street, said by phone Wednesday the company is rolling out a number of practices to encourage social distancing, including visual markers on the floor that will serve as “reminders to keep the six-feet social distance.”
Those measures should be in place by Monday, she said.
The company also is working on spacing out cash register lines “as far as possible” and setting up plexiglass barriers between
cashiers and customers.
Still, such physical walls cannot be put up everywhere people congregate, as Bart Demarco has learned. Homeless, the New York native, who has lived in Santa Fe for 30 years, is spending nights at the Interfaith Community Shelter on Cerrillos Road.
It was clear from a visit to that shelter’s parking lot that residents there are not maintaining much of a distance from others. Demarco said it’s not possible inside, either. But he said he’s “not real worried” about contracting COVID-19.
But he is concerned about the speed and suddenness with which businesses, buildings and people seem to be closing down around him.
“It’s pretty serious when you look at it that way,” he said. “I’m even afraid they may declare martial law.”
Panhandling at the corner of Zafarano Drive and Rodeo Road, Demarco, 48, sees less traffic — and fewer donations — but more people rolling down their windows to ask how he is doing these days.
“They’re being nice,” he said. “They care.”
Demarco said he’s been beaten up by unemployment, bad personal choices, alcohol, drugs and jail time.
The coronavirus pandemic, he said, tops them all.
You can’t see it, but “you know it’s there,” he said.
The New Mexican’s Michael Gerstein contributed to this report.