Photo by Erin Nelson.
Dr. Michael Saag, an infectious diseases specialist at UAB Hospital, sits on the porch at his home with his son’s dog, Marvin.
It’s safe to say the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most traumatic episodes in recent U.S. history.
By mid-May, America had seen 32 million COVID-19 cases and 583,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to the CDC.
Alabama had seen about 540,000 cases and 11,000 deaths, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH).
In Jefferson County, there had been nearly 80,000 cases and more than 1,500 deaths, according to the ADPH.
However, there are now three vaccines approved to fight the virus.
According to CDC data, the pandemic may have peaked Jan. 12, when America saw about 222,000 new cases. On May 15, there were about 28,000 new cases.
Local expert Dr. Michael Saag, a professor in the UAB Division of Infectious Diseases, expressed guarded optimism about the pandemic recently when he spoke to Village Living in early May.
“I hope we’re at the beginning of the later part,” said Saag, a long-time Mountain Brook resident. “Time will tell. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re at a point that we can get back to some semblance of normal living.”
Saag said that America will likely contain COVID-19 “to a large degree” the next six months.
That doesn’t mean we’re done with the virus, however,
“The threat will be there for years to come, and there will be the fear of reigniting a lingering endemic fire in some areas,” Saag said.
In short, America is poised at a historic moment of transition from a full-blown pandemic to whatever comes next.
To help capture that moment, Village Living reached out to Saag and other Mountain Brook residents in early to mid-May to solicit their feelings about this life-changing period.
They share some of the emotions they felt when the pandemic began and how they attempted to cope.
We hear some of the things they’ve learned during the pandemic and the silver linings they’ve found in a very dark cloud.
They also assess the pandemic’s human toll and offer their thoughts about what seems to be a brighter, but still uncertain, future.
Coping with uncertainty
The pandemic’s arrival stirred powerful emotions, especially since it had been over a century since Americans had faced such a deadly health crisis.
“The shut-down last spring created uncertainty that our generation has never experienced,” said Laura Luckie Finch, a counselor in Mountain Brook.
Finch said she has seen increased “anxiety and stress” among her clients.
“It scared me to death, just the unknown and never dealing with anything like this before,” said Will Haver, owner of Taco Mama in Crestline.
“Watching the world grind to a halt was shocking on a personal and professional level,” said Walter Crye, vice president of Greenhalgh Insurance Agency.
Many people dealt with their emotions, including the uncertainty, by plunging into work.
“I knew we had a job to do, and the city had to take a leading role,” Mountain Brook City Manager Sam Gaston said.
This was true for Haver, who was busy with his restaurants.
“We were navigating major challenges, so you didn't have a lot of time to think,” Haver said.
Having two school-age children was the hardest thing to deal with in spring 2020 for Crye and his wife, Krisalyn, a realtor.
“Becoming daily teachers only added to the anxiety and difficulty of continuing to try to work during the early stages of the pandemic,” he said.
Adapting
Mountain Brook residents adapted to the lockdown in the early days of the pandemic as best they could.
“I've seen a lot of families really pull together and support each other during this crisis,” Finch said.
Reed McMullan, a Regions Bank assistant vice president, said he and his wife began working remotely.
“We made the best of our time after work hours during the quarantine by cooking, reading, playing old-fashioned board games and a lot of exercising,” he said.
“We found new ways to connect with family, friends and colleagues through video calls and handwritten notes,” McMullan said.
City Councilor Alice Womack and her husband Lowell chose not to visit their parents in order to keep their parents safer.
“But we created this family Zoom call that we do every Sunday night,” Womack said.
Crye and his wife, like many others, used electronic means to run their businesses.
“Our insurance agency adapted by embracing the virtual sales process, and much of what we learned will change how we do things forever,” he said.
“People are resilient, I truly believe,” said Laura Finch.
‘Our ticket to ride’
There seems to be greater optimism about the pandemic since the coming of the vaccines approved to fight COVID-19.
“Those vaccines are our ticket to ride,” Saag said in May. “They are the pathway to the freedom that we have been missing for the last 13 months.”
In Jefferson County, about 248,000 people—about 48% of the population—had received at least one vaccination as of May 15, according to ADPH.
Pharmacists Ralph and Rebecca Sorrell have dispensed the Moderna vaccine at Ritch’s Pharmacy in Mountain Brook Village and have seen lots of emotions from those receiving their shots.
“We see hope,” Rebecca Sorrell said. “We see great relief and celebration.”
Feeling better
As the pandemic wanes, many Mountain Brook residents seem to be feeling safer overall.
“I still wear a mask out in public but I’m a lot more optimistic that things will continue to improve,” Gaston said in early May.
Womack and her husband have been vaccinated and largely returned to their normal routine, but some precautions remain.
“We are still wearing masks and are still a little hesitant in hugging our parents,” Womack said.
“I think we should still be careful and hope a bad variant doesn't come along and start things back up,” said John Rutherford, an executive at Blackstone Construction.
“Some of my clients have had their vaccines and express hope and relief,” Finch said. “I have a few who don't believe the virus is real. I have others who have a new perspective on things and are wanting to live more cautiously.”
Silver linings
Mountain Brook residents learned some important lessons from the pandemic.
Haver said he sees “more people slowing down and investing in the important things more.”
For Haver, those things include getting his exercise and spending more time with his wife and two children.
“I think we all learned to slow down and not take the everyday ‘little things’ for granted, said Caroline Shea Thomas, philanthropy coordinator for the Christopher Kids nonprofit.
“We’ve earned to prioritize our loved ones, our health and the community we’re so fortunate to have more than ever,” she said.
Thomas and her husband survived relatively mild cases of COVID-19 in November.
COVID-19 “forced us to tighten our circles and prioritize those closest to us—family and a handful of close friends that helped keep us sane,” said Rutherford, who got married just before the pandemic.
“I think we will always look back on this time with gratitude,” Crye said. “We were forced to slow down and spend huge amounts of time with our kids.”
“We learned how resilient we are,” Womack said, referring to the American people, noting that a lot of people feared the U.S. economy would collapse, but it didn’t.
“You do get a sense of comfort that everything will be OK,” Womack said.
One “silver lining” is that “everyone has gained a first-hand insight into how drug development happens, how vaccine development happens, what the FDA does and how it protects us in ways that were invisible to us before, and in a backhanded way how science happens,” Saag said.
Saag himself had COVID-19 in March 2020.
“I had a moderate to severe illness, not bad enough to be hospitalized, but darn close, and I had about a 4-week recovery time for the fatigue and shortness of breath to go away,” he said.”
Having COVID-19 “made me a more effective provider because I could look at a patient and I could say, ‘I went through this. I totally get it,’ Saag said.
Social divides
COVID-19 has led to our society becoming polarized, with people taking very different positions on the value of masking, social distancing and vaccinations.
This polarization has occurred “nationally but also in Birmingham and in Mountain Brook,” Saag said.
For some people, their choices on these issues have become political statements, he said.
“If I had to point to one thing that has hurt the most in the U.S., it is the politicalization of public health,” Saag said, referring to America’s pandemic response.
“We can argue about these other things in the political space, but I really hope we stop arguing about what’s good for public health,” he said.
Crye said that he fears that the politicization of the pandemic will have lasting effects, but Gaston is optimistic.
“I think over time the divide is going to heal more as more people, hopefully, are able to resume a more normal lifestyle,” he said.
It is also impossible to forget the human toll of the pandemic, city residents said.
“Mountain Brook was definitely affected,” Rutherford said. “I mourn those in our community that were hospitalized or who passed away.”
“It’s a very sad situation, and you can’t lose sight that people lost family members,” said Womack, who noted that one of her friends died of COVID-19.
An uncertain future
As conditions improve, some residents are bullish on the future.
“By the time we get back to school at the end of the summer, the economy should be hot and we'll all be hustling around like normal,” Crye said.
Of course, COVID-19 will remain part of our lives for a while.
For example, even those who’ve been vaccinated “will almost certainly need annual boosters,” Saag said.
And there may be some long-lasting social and psychological changes, some residents said.
“I think 9/11 changed us forever,” Gaston said. “It made us a little more cautious, a little more aware, having our radars up.”
He believes the pandemic may have a similar effect.
“It may still be a while before we all feel 100 percent comfortable to slap each other on the back or getting in someone’s face while we stand close and talk,” Gaston said.
Womack saw the shockwaves that the pandemic — a “totally unexpected” event — sent through the business world.
“I think there will be more attention to being prepared for the unexpected,” Womack said.
However, some of the changes we’ve seen may not be permanent, McMullan said.
The pandemic forced us “to connect with more people virtually…but I believe that physical, in-person interactions are what make communities special,” he said.
McMullan said he is glad to see more in-person events being scheduled in Mountain Brook.
The pandemic —like any other large, historic event — will become part of our future, Thomas said.
“There will always be the classes that graduated during Covid, the couples who navigated their weddings during Covid, families who had a baby during Covid and so on,” she said. “Experiences such as these do not go away.”
Saag has one fond wish for the future.
“I hope that as a society we will have a new appreciation for science,” he said.
