Today marks the second anniversary of the first coronavirus-related closures in Florida, presenting us with the perfect opportunity to assess the global pandemic’s impact on our community.
It wasn’t all bad.
After the crippling shutdowns we experienced in the early weeks of this public-health emergency, in fact, Vero Beach has roared back – and much of the comeback was fueled by COVID-connected factors.
Not only is the real estate market booming, but tourism is at an all-time high this winter.
Restaurants are packed. Hotels are full. Retail stores are buzzing.
We’re also seeing more new businesses open their doors.
“There has been quite an uptick in start-ups,” said Helene Caseltine, the county’s economic development director. “And for the past 18 months. We’ve been getting a lot of interest from businesses looking to relocate here.
“When the governor announced Florida was open for business during the pandemic, he went against the grain,” she added. “But Florida has become an attractive destination, and some of these businesses like what they’re seeing in Indian River County.”
Whether you agree with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ COVID policies or not, there’s no denying they’ve brought more people – and businesses – to the state.
Some of these newcomers have found their way to Vero Beach, where the ongoing real estate boom has sent home prices skyrocketing, sparked a surge in residential construction and created an inventory shortage for potential buyers.
The barrier island has been a particularly hot market, now attracting attention from California buyers as well as from the Northeast and South Florida.
Local realtors say the pandemic was a factor in many of the buyers’ decisions to move here – where the climate is mild, taxes are low, community is less densely populated, and state has no COVID mandates.
And as a result of the pandemic, many companies now permit their employees to work remotely, which means their jobs might be based in New York or Miami or Los Angeles, but they can do them from Vero Beach.
Think about it: How many of you knew what “Zoom” was before COVID arrived?
COVID, however, didn’t merely bring people to Vero Beach. It also brought out the best of the people who live here, whose embrace of philanthropy remained strong throughout the pandemic.
Although most cultural and in-person fundraising events were cancelled, the donations kept coming. No major nonprofit organization failed during the pandemic.
“People didn’t stop giving,” said Hope Woodhouse, past president of the John’s Island Community Service League, which has raised millions of dollars for local causes. “If you can articulate a need, people will respond.”
Even when the pandemic forced the cancellation of its 40th Anniversary Gala in March 2020, the Service League raised and dispersed more than $1.2 million, which included grants to charitable agencies, the United Way’s COVID-19 Fund, and a scholarship fund for John’s Island employees and their children.
Last year, the Service League raised and distributed more than $1.5 million to 39 local agencies and the employees’ scholarship fund.
The John’s Island Foundation, meanwhile, dispersed roughly $850,000 to 26 agencies and another $50,000 to the United Way’s COVID-19 Fund in 2019-20, then made grants totaling $915,000 to 23 agencies in 2020-21.
Other country-club communities in the Vero Beach area – such as Windsor, The Moorings, Orchid Island and Grand Harbor – also sustained their charitable efforts during the pandemic.
The generosity of donors and patrons also has kept the Riverside Theatre financially strong, even though COVID prompted a pause in March of its 2020 season, cancellation of the entire 2021 season and another pause in January of the 2022 season.
Similarly, the Vero Beach Theatre Guild, which had been shuttered since March 2021 because of the pandemic, opened its 63rd season in January in a newly renovated and reconfigured facility that allows for social distancing and provides a more COVID-safe environment.
The Vero Beach Museum of Art also has endured COVID closures without any loss of funding.
To be sure, though, the pandemic did plenty of harm here, and our community did suffer losses – the worst of which were the more than 630 people who succumbed to COVID-related illnesses in this county.
Too many of our neighbors, particularly the elderly, are still coping with COVID-spawned mental-health issues, including depression, despair, fear, stress and loneliness.
The pandemic also has exacerbated our lack of affordable housing, the downside to the aforementioned real-estate boom.
The same is true with traffic congestion, as our roads have not kept up with the influx of newcomers. As a result, we’re seeing a noticeable increase in aggressive driving and road rage unbefitting Vero Beach.
Our courts are backed up, too, after jury trials were postponed for more than a year during the pandemic.
Some local businesses didn’t survive, despite the funds made available through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.
Even as the local economy soars, many businesses are confronting product shortages stemming from COVID-caused interruptions to the global supply chain, as well as an inability to find the workers they need to operate.
When businesses were shuttered early in the pandemic, their laid-off workers received federal supplements to their state unemployment benefits and essentially were paid to stay home.
Many of them didn’t return when those businesses reopened, opting instead to change careers, further their education or pursue jobs that offered more security, better pay or work-hour flexibility.
“The tide is starting to turn a little bit,” Caseltine said. “We’re starting to see people looking at full-time jobs again. Some younger people, though, they’re not looking to go where the jobs are.
They’re looking at where they want to live, and then they’ll find a job.
“They see workforce flexibility as a benefit.”
One shortage that should concern us is in the teaching profession, which continues to lose members, many of whom grew increasingly frustrated with their work environment during the pandemic – especially in Florida, where remote learning posed unprecedented challenges and, when schools reopened, the governor outlawed classroom mask mandates.
Which takes us to one of the most damaging effects of COVID: political division.
Somehow, we allowed the pandemic to be politicized and, ultimately, polarizing. The decision to wear or not wear masks became a partisan statement. To a lesser degree, the same was true of vaccines, when they were made available.
This conflict escalated at governmental gatherings, especially school board meetings, where some parents were so opposed to their children being required to wear masks in class that they organized and, at times, became hostile.
That divide persists, even now that the pandemic is waning and masks are no longer an issue, and it extends beyond the realm of education.
So much has happened in the two years since our governor issued his first meaningful executive order in response to the then-budding, COVID-19 pandemic, closing Florida’s bars and nightclubs.
It was St. Patrick’s Day 2020, which now seems so long ago that my memories of the early weeks of the pandemic are blurred.
I remember the “safer-at-home” closures of non-essential businesses, which locked down much of the local economy but allowed banks, gas stations and supermarkets to remain open.
I remember restaurants being restricted to takeout-only service until they were allowed to reopen their dining rooms in phases, based on percentage of capacity.
I remember country clubs shutting down their facilities before they, too, cautiously reopened in phases and, for a while, allowed members to resume playing golf as long as long as they rode alone in carts and didn’t touch the flags on the greens.
And, of course, I remember schools closing, laptops being distributed and students forced to rely on remote learning.
But if you ask me what happened when? That’s become a bit fuzzy. I’d need to check the dates.
Something I’ll never forget, though, was my initial belief that the “novel coronavirus,” as it was called then, would soon pass and cause only a brief interruption of our everyday lives.
“We’ll be back to normal by Thanksgiving,” I remember telling my wife, adding, “maybe the end of summer.”
I was wrong, of course.
Two years later, COVID is still stubbornly hanging around – but we do appear to be getting back to normal as the combination of vaccines and booster shots flattened the curve of infection and continue to take away the pandemic’s legs.
Actually, most folks here returned to their pre-COVID routines months ago.
Masks are rarely seen, even indoors in crowded public places. The crowds that packed the Under the Oaks art show this past weekend were almost entirely unmasked. Social distancing has gone the way of the pay phone. And you won’t find many of those how-to hand-washing fliers that adorned every restroom early in the pandemic.
Truth is, nobody talks much about COVID anymore – not in the present tense, anyway.
Maybe we should.
But for better or worse – that’s up to you – this pandemic changed Vero Beach.
