he’s seeing more New York license plates than usual. File photo by Erin Mansfield/VTDigger
In this column, VTDigger business and economy reporter Anne Wallace Allen looks at the possible impact of visitors to the state at a time of the coronavirus.
It will be years before we have a full understanding of just what COVID-19 wrought when it spread into our lives this winter.
But it’s already clear that when we start feeling gravely threatened, one of the first things our species does (other than hoarding paper goods, bottled water and groceries) is to hunker down within our own communities.
In Vermont, that means interest groups have banded together to advocate for what they need, whether it’s health care providers seeking masks or teachers sharing best practices as they start online learning. Finding safety in our communities is a valuable survival skill, and it also feels great. But in this case, it also means we’re hearing persistent rumors that out-of-staters are flocking to Vermont from urban areas to ride out the COVID-19 storm at our expense.
Stories of out-of-state plates clogging up supermarket parking lots have been legion online. Many VTDigger readers have emailed anecdotal reports of this out-of-state invasion. Last week, the Health Department revealed that seven of the state’s 17 confirmed COVID cases were in people who had come from out of state.
If you read blogs based in New York or Boston, you have probably come across conversations between people mulling the wisdom of leaving for their second homes in Vermont, and Vermonters telling the out-of-towners to stay home so they don’t overrun the health system. Social media reports in other popular vacation spots, like Maine and New Hampshire, also tell of locals trying to keep visitors out.
Noticing out-of-state license plates, and watching blog traffic, is about as scientific as it’s going to get when we try to determine whether second-home owners really are heading here in greater-than-usual numbers. I set out to ask people in ski communities what they were seeing and I received a range of different answers, from those who commented that they did think many second-home owners were in residence, to many who hadn’t noticed any difference.
I also talked to a half-dozen volunteer fire department chiefs, because second-home owners are generally pretty active on those departments. If they had been coming into town, they were probably checking in to see if they could help.
None of the chiefs I talked to had noticed anything unusual in that quarter, although Paul Cerutti, Woodbury’s fire chief, noted that second-home owners in his town generally own camps on Woodbury lake that aren’t winterized, located on roads that are still impassable. He doubts any have shown up.
But “I have heard the same rumors,” said Cerutti.
“I definitely know a couple of people who have hunkered down here in Lincoln, but I don’t have any other insight,” said Dan Ober, the fire chief in that town. “I haven’t noticed a huge trend.”
Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes, said his relatives in Brooklyn talk a lot about camping in Vermont to avoid COVID-19, but none of them have actually made any moves to do it. Birong, who owns a restaurant in Vergennes, thinks he’s seeing more New York license plates than usual. And he added that people he knows in the plumbing and heating world have told him they’ve been asked to fire up the heat in seasonal and vacation homes earlier than usual.
Birong added that someone in state government told him they were calculating the state’s population as the census number, plus the typical number present for a President’s Day skiing weekend. The Department of Public Safety didn’t return an email seeking more information about this.
Josh White, chief medical officer at Gifford Medical Center, said he’s spoken to many people who are seeking refuge from Boston and New York, and noted the Health Department report about the seven out-of-state coronavirus patients.
The Department of Health is no longer tracking those numbers, White said.
“We’re reaching a point where it’s not felt to matter; they are all here,” he said. He added that out-of-staters probably won’t affect Vermont hospitals.
“They may already have it, and bring it from places like Boston or New York,” he said. But “if your plan is to come to Vermont and stay in your house and not interact with anybody, I really don’t have a problem with that.”
Like many, many others I spoke to about out-of-towners, Birong noted people from elsewhere are often longtime members of the community, sometimes with deep family ties there.
“They may be tagged with the quote-unquote flatlander thing, but a lot of them have been faces and parts of the community for a long time,” said Birong. “They’ve been paying property taxes — actually at an elevated rate.”
Anyway, with a pandemic reaching around the globe, does it really matter where people come from? We all came from somewhere, after all. As long as all of the U.S. states can get the federal leadership they need to manage a coherent response, it doesn’t really matter what side of the state line people end up on.
Birong said he doesn’t think an influx of outsiders, if there is one, is going to raise anyone’s chances of catching COVID-19.
“It’s already here; it’s already bouncing around,” he said. “Will it be a stressor on our health care resources? Nobody can really say. Would it be more of a strain on our toilet paper supply? Probably that’s it.”
