It’s back to business as usual at Lake of the Ozarks
Most residents not upset by viral party pictures
OSAGE BEACH, Mo. – On a sunkissed summer Saturday in this tourist town, one could almost imagine the coronavirus pandemic didn’t happen. Dozens of people mingled, unmasked, outside the frozen custard stand. The puttputt golf course and the go-kart track had plenty of customers, and the Grand Glaize Beach at Lake of the Ozarks State Park was crowded with visitors tossing footballs and digging their toes in the sand.
“Hardly anyone wears masks here,” observed Bob Harrison, visiting with his wife, Etta, from Olathe, Kansas, outside Kansas City. “People are sort of like, here, it’s a vacation resort, and they don’t have to worry about it.”
As summer approaches, tourist destinations from Cape Cod to Yellowstone National Park face looming questions over how to reopen tourism-dependent economies while balancing risks from the coronavirus. At the Lake of the Ozarks, a 54,000-acre reservoir in Missouri thrust into the spotlight over Memorial Day party photos, the answer seems to be: We’re open for business.
Differing opinions
Many residents and visitors at the lake remain relatively unperturbed about the virus and the national outrage over scenes of packed pool parties at Backwater Jacks and other Lake of the Ozarks bars over the holiday weekend. Even after one pool party attendee tested positive for COVID-19 and could have infected hundreds of others in the Midwest, some still look on the sunny side.
“It was a good thing,” said Larry Clark, who was selling coffee at a farmers market stand. “It showed we can open up . ... It’s not something that should control our lives.”
His wife, Kat, said people have been eager to get out of the house and don’t want to be told what not to do. “It’s just
the nature of freedom lovers,” she said.
Two stalls over, vendor Kathy Peironnet had another view of the partiers. “I have a name for people who do things like that: covidiots,” said Peironnet, who wore a mask while selling art and jewelry at her booth.
Since Missouri’s stay-at-home order expired May 3, retail businesses of various sizes are allowed to reopen as long as they limit occupants to 10% or 25% of a building’s capacity. Restaurants must seat no more than 10 people at a table. People should practice social distancing of at least 6 feet, the new order says.
The Lake of the Ozarks region opened up cautiously at first. Camden County, Missouri, which houses much of the lake, has recorded 37 cases and one death from COVID-19 as of May 31, a rate of 80.76 per 100,000 people. For comparison, St. Louis – where many lake visitors live – has a case rate more than seven times higher. If out-of-towners did contract the coronavirus in Camden, they would take it, and their case counts, back to their home counties.
“In terms of total cases, the lake area has been very minimal,” said Nathan Bechtold, editor-in-chief of LakeExpo, a news outlet that covers the lake lifestyle.
“By early to mid-May, it seemed like business was picking up. By the time we hit Memorial Day, I think everyone had a sense, economically speaking, we may be making up for lost time.”
Taking coronavirus home
Some out-of-towners who own area vacation homes came to the lake in March and April to ride out social isolation lockdowns. As the holiday neared, demand skyrocketed as visitors from surrounding cities and states booked their getaways. Some boat dealers reported record-breaking sales. On Memorial Day weekend, the population of Camden County swelled from its typical 50,000 residents to hundreds of thousands of visitors, Bechtold said.
“There was pent-up demand regionally to get out, to get in the sunshine,” Bechtold said.
Russell Burdette, owner of Your Lake Vacation, a property management company, said his company sold out for the Memorial Day weekend for the first time.
Viral video showed customers crammed at swim-up pool bars over the holiday weekend. Geospatial data analytics platform Tectonix published an analysis of anonymized cellphone data showing that customers at Backwater Jacks traveled to and from St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; Iowa; Illinois; and other locations for the holiday weekend. St. Louis County issued a travel advisory, and the Kansas Health Department asked anyone who attended the crowded parties to selfquarantine for 14 days. In an interview on CNN, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the party scene “tempting fate and asking for trouble.”
Late last month, the Camden County Health Department issued a news release saying a Boone County resident tested positive for COVID-19 after being at the lake Memorial Day weekend. The person visited Backwater Jacks, Shady Gators, the Lazy Gators pool and Buffalo Wild Wings and “was likely incubating illness and possibly infectious at the time of the visit,” the statement said.
In response to the backlash, Backwater Jacks posted statements to Facebook saying “no laws were broken” and “customers should have the freedom to choose” whether to visit. Hundreds posted supportive comments to social media.
“I thought it was stupid,” said Etta Harrison, a retired nurse. “But these are young people, and they want to have fun.”
Saturday, she and her husband wore masks after eating lunch in a cafe at the Dierbergs market, which installed a hand-washing station outside.
Bechtold said many people felt the national media sensationalized the story. He said lakeside pools might have held a few thousand people, but hundreds of thousands were at the lake, most of them acting responsibly. “The pictures of the pools,” he said, “were not a very fair and complete representation of what happened here last weekend.”
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit, editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation and, along with Policy Analysis and Polling, is one of the three major operating programs of KFF. KFF is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.