Editor’s note: This commentary is by Anne N. Sosin, who is the program director for the Center for Global Health Equity at Dartmouth College and the co-lead on Dartmouth research on Covid-19 and rural health equity in Northern New England.
For months, Vermonters have heard Covid-19 “refugees” and tourists offer explanations for the state’s long-running success in sustaining the nation’s lowest infection rates. Rurality confers protection, they uttered, oblivious to our traditions of coming together for town meetings, hockey tournaments, and potlucks, and exploding epidemics across much of rural America. Our populations are only Democratic, they said, ignoring a purple complexion reflected in split state government and fractious debates over climate policy and minimum wage. Better yet, there are no people, they declared along our crowded trails and apple orchards. Many of us in Vermont too have offered our own versions of magical realism for this success. Even Gov. Phil Scott, credited by many Vermonters for his role as the architect of this response, responded to Dr. Tony Fauci’s praise of Vermont as the model for the country with a promise to send a maple creemee.
When our Dartmouth team began our research on Covid-19 and rural health equity in Northern New England in early March, a statewide spreadsheet cataloging the efforts offered the first clues that our pandemic export was more than a sweet confection. In a state where the physical distance of our rural landscape belies the closeness of our communities, Vermonters came together to stay apart. Village committees made lists of vulnerable residents, delivered meals to isolated elders, and bolstered supplies at food shelves for the newly unemployed. Health systems dispatched community health workers to deliver medicine and nutritional assistance to high-risk patients. Groups began sewing and delivering PPE to essential workers at gas stations and grocery stores. Schools sent school meals along bus routes and set up mobile broadband hubs.
When the snow finally receded in May, our data highlighted the critical role of community action manifest in the #VTWeGotThis, Let the Virus Unite Us, and Better Together signs peppering our remote hills. Seeing our low case counts, Vermonters might have found cause to join other states in their preemptive toast to the end of a pandemic that never materialized. And yet, when we watched swelling epidemics elsewhere, we mostly agreed with our governor’s decision to adopt a mask mandate. We needed to safeguard our hard-earned gains. And so we masked up together and moved on.
Yet, we now see that the trust that sustained our success as other states have seen resurgences has left us vulnerable. As of last report, 71% of our growing Covid-19 cases are related to social gatherings. We mask up to go to the grocery store and schools but then come together for birthdays and playdates. We relax with hockey teammates after strenuously maintaining protocols to protect schools and ailing businesses. We see Covid-19 as a threat borne by out-of-state license plates and not the close friends and neighbors that have carried us through three pandemic seasons. Sometimes we openly defy guidance too — how could those who celebrate births and offer solace for our losses bring harm into our homes?
We know that we must refortify our defenses, just as we seal cracks in our windows in advance of the coming winter, to arrest Covid-19’s intrusion into our communities. Yet we need not retreat to our homes in despair. We must instead harness the trust that has been the cornerstone of our success to reshape its trajectory. Vermonters who come together to pull cars out of the snow and deliver meals to the sick and bereaved must continue to find ways of supporting those who struggle with restrictions on the way we live, learn, work and play.
We can also imagine ways to have safe pandemic fun and participate in activities that spread hope and not virus to the far corners of our state. Many of our cherished winter activities — skiing, ice fishing, sledding, and bonfires — can be enjoyed more safely, and we can imagine new ways to have fun together as a state. We can lift each other up as we fight to protect our vulnerable Vermonters and keep our schools and businesses open.
This winter, Americans await the arrival of a vaccine that will allow us to come together again. Yet here in Vermont, we know that we have all the tools we need in our communities to protect our villages from the virus. We must trust not only in the public health measures put in place to protect us but also in each other to make them succeed.