(In our first installment last week, we just about reached the end of 2020, with vaccines about to release and 4000 cases in Steuben. We pick up the story there.)

Year’s end brought an outbreak at Steuben County prison, and many banks returned to drive-through service only. The sheriff’s office calculated that domestic incident calls had increased 29% over the previous year, validating fears that increased isolation, plus increased tension, would lead to more abuse. Food Bank of the Southern Tier served 20% more household requests in ’20 than in ’19. One good result of all this – flu cases went down, thanks to improved hygiene and distancing. Apparently we hadn’t been washing our hands as well as we’d thought we were!
Some people still insisted the whole thing was a hoax, while others had fears of vaccines. But as vaccines became widely available, Americans lined up (with six-foot intervals) in millions. In January Steuben started offering shots to those over 75, in addition to front-line workers.
Steuben County Public Health authorized high-risk winter sports for high schools. County school district administrators unanimously agreed that masks would be required (with medical exemptions), and no indoor spectators will be permitted. Business closures continued, including the venerable Carey’s Groceries in Cohocton. (Some closures were due to owners who had planned to retire deciding not to open up again.) Movie theaters and libraries reopened, with limitations, around the first of March. Corning Community College became a state mass-vaccination site, while pharmacies and County Public Health also continued vaccinations. In April, vaccines became available for all those 18 and over. A special effort reached out to migrant workers.
With some circles still downplaying the risk, or even the existence, of the virus, too many people did not seek medical help until their cases had become very severe. Steuben County Dairy Festival rook place in June, after a one-year absence. But a group of demonstrators demanded that Corning-Painted Post Schools end their mask mandate for students.
By June the dangerous Delta variant of the virus was becoming widespread; many sites again required, or strongly recommended, masks.
People who’d either been vaccinated OR had had the virus gained some degree of immunity, and as those numbers went up, the number of NEW cases went down. In not much more than a month and a half, Steuben had added 3000 cases. Then it took two months to get the next thousand, and almost four months (April 2 to July 29) to get another thousand. Things looked good! But then we had another thousand by September 15. After that, thousand-case blocks built up every two or three weeks until the start of this year, when it looked like all Hell broke loose. We got a thousand cases in three days – two days! – four days – in one month and two days, we added 6000 cases.
Why wasn’t there panic in the streets? In part, I suppose, people were “dulled” by the whole experience, becoming listless and resigned to huge numbers.
Also, this was ANTICIPATED rise, for several reasons. This was “flu season,” when flu-like cases typically rise. There were multiple “gathering holidays” (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s) to breed cases – all still bad, and much of it avoidable, but at least unsurprising.
The delta variant was still giving trouble, but many new cases were of the omicron variant – easier to catch, but normally not so severe. On top of that, case reports shot up immediately when thousands of home test kits were handed out. In time, matters equalized. It took Steuben four weeks to rack up the next thousand. Going from 23,000 to 24,000 took a month and a-half. In March, Hornell held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade in three years. A shopkeeper in Corning told me that some folks were requesting COVID posters from the windows, figuring that they’d be worth money someday.
That might be a little premature. New variants are always possible, long-term effects are unclear, and poor hygiene is still dangerous. Masks and distancing still matter. But we may be on the downward slope at last.