A Season Of Hope

“It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,” said President Donald Trump in February 2020, speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic that was just beginning to gain horrific momentum. On paper, the quote can be read to sound hopeful; in real life, it was more a boast, a taunt, a dismissal. Nineteen months later, it feels like a reminder of just how clueless all of us, not least the former president, have been when it comes to understanding this little virus and its virulence, and its frustrating resilience, bordering on invincibility.

It’s not invincible, though, and the response to the virus was remarkably swift and effective. A vaccine came rapidly, was deployed at an emergency pace, and most Americans have stepped up to stop its advance, while gaining some degree of individual protection. Now that the Food and Drug Administration has fully approved the vaccine, more people are rolling up their sleeves.

And so, we start to emerge, warily.

This weekend’s HarborFest in Sag Harbor, coming on the heels of a bustling summer season, was the chance for locals (and a fair number of visitors as well) to celebrate both. There was a palpable feeling of joy and celebration at the event — lots of smiles, lots of dancing, lots of laughing. It was a weekend to remember after a long and trying 18 months when most meetings, events and celebrations were held virtually. HarborFest itself had been canceled last year for the first time in decades, along with most every other major gathering.

On Saturday and Sunday, there was respite, as residents and visitors were able to gather to reflect somberly about the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and then come together as a community for simple pleasures like an arts and crafts fair, buying a hot dog to support the Boy Scouts, taking in live music and cheering on whaleboat races.

HarborFest has deep roots in Sag Harbor, a tradition that goes back to the Old Whalers’ Festival in the early 1960s, when a group led by John Steinbeck, Bob Barry and Bob Freidah put this small village on the world’s map with a festival unique to an old whaling village that had turned into an industrial hub.

Sag Harbor today is a world-class tourist destination that has struggled to hold on to some of these old traditions in the face of changing demographics and an escalating cost of living. But you wouldn’t have known that on Long Wharf over the weekend.

Local restaurants competed in a clam chowder contest, with 300 mugs selling out in just under two hours. Main Street was alive with a joyous vibrancy and a local flavor that has been missing for the last year and a half. The summer season was a busy one, but it’s not a time that locals can call their own. HarborFest, with its signature whaleboat races off Windmill Beach, belongs to the families who have lived here for generations, and for the businesses still lucky enough to call Sag Harbor their home.

Across our region, kids are also now back in school locally, though masked as a precaution. Most restaurants are open and seating both inside and out, busy enough to stress the reduced staff that many have post-pandemic. We turn on our TVs this September and see full NFL stadiums, every seat packed, not a mask in sight.

Meanwhile, the COVID numbers wobble. In the region, and the state, the early leadership of New Yorkers has paid dividends, blunting the upswings of the curve. But it still turns upward, at times alarmingly. In truth, we have no idea what the next few months will bring. We hope for progress, but we must prepare for setbacks. We are seeking a balance between safety and freedom, and this virus is not cooperative.

One positive note: Despite 56,000 deaths in New York State from COVID-related illness, despite some of the more worrisome data points, the number of doses of vaccination being administered in the state is in the tens of thousands per day. The number of adults 18 and over with at least one dose is around 80 percent, and six in 10 New Yorkers of all ages are fully vaccinated. Those numbers are growing, and they will jump when the vaccine is approved for kids in the next month or two, as expected.

We don’t know — even the scientists can only offer an educated guess, like meteorologists predicting tomorrow’s weather, and for the same reason — but there is a tipping point. The number of vaccines, combined with the number of survivors with immunity, will hit it one day. Epidemiologists say there’s a point where conditions for a virus’s spread go from favorable to unfavorable, and just as the spread accelerated exponentially in favorable conditions, it should retreat nearly as quickly once that point is reached.

President Trump was wrong: It’s no miracle. But we’re nearing a point where we can hope. Getting there won’t take a miracle — it takes real action, actual sacrifice and a unifying patriotism that’s been waning in recent years.

And it probably won’t disappear completely. But as the South Fork takes another step toward “normal” this fall, perhaps it will no longer loom quite so ominously. Soon, perhaps, we can all breathe a sigh of relief — safely.