Month of death: Beaufort County visitors, we love you but not in a pandemic | Editorial

March was a month of loss.

April will be a month of death.

This much we know in Beaufort County as the surreal swirl of the COVID-19 coronavirus encroaches on what we love to call paradise.

For many reasons, March was filled with doubt, denial and disbelief, even as South Carolina’s epidemiologist said the state would see a cumulative total of 8,053 COVID-19 cases by May 2.

Gov. Henry McMaster has urged, and in many cases ordered, people to do the right things, but he has refused to do the most obvious: Lock down the freedom of movement we all take for granted. Stop all incoming flights, so to speak. Close the inns and guest homes.

This pandemic spread from China due to massive movement to and from its area of origin — until the country learned to lock it down. Apparently, we want a second kick of that mule.

State Attorney General Alan Wilson did Beaufort County a disservice by crushing trust in state leadership. His office rendered a reasonable legal opinion stating that local governments do not have the legal power to exceed the emergency declarations of the governor. The opinion warned that doing so would open local jurisdictions to legal liability.

But Myrtle Beach ignored it. It kicked all visitors out by time and date certain: noon last Sunday. Boom. Done. And what did the attorney general say? He would not challenge it, and he would tell locals to go by local orders.

So much for leadership during a crisis.

So Hilton Head Island and all of Beaufort County are working on the honor system. They are obeying state law, as they should. They are not defying the governor. They do not have that right, regardless of what Myrtle Beach chose to do.

Our governments have urged hotels and the vacation home rental market to close shop until the end of April. They urge that advertising not draw visitors here at this time. Hilton Head wants people to be denied beach access, even from private property.

Meanwhile, residents are saying the honor system is not good enough. The vacuum in leadership has led to vigilante, mob-like behavior against people with out-of-state license tags.

Hilton Head residents say they can see numbers that apparently the governor cannot.

Among them would be these numbers. Hilton Head has 40,000 residents. Thirty-six percent of them (14,400 people) are age 65 or older, the most vulnerable group to die of COVID-19 infection. Hilton Head Hospital has 12 ICU beds.

Beaufort Memorial Hospital has 12 ICU beds, and Coastal Carolina Hospital has four.

Demand for those beds will not be as acute as those numbers indicate.

But here’s the point: Those numbers don’t count visitors.

Here on the coast, we know all about welcoming the world. We’ve become rich and famous doing that since the mid-20th century. We do it well, and we’re desperate to get back to it.

But we’re also good at coping with hurricanes. We know when to bail.

Maybe it would help our leaders to think of this pandemic as a hurricane.

It is no longer a big swirl wobbling offshore with uncertain destination.

It will undeniably hit us hard, and it will sit on top of us for weeks. When it’s a hurricane, we get out of harm’s way. For a CAT 5 pandemic, we have slowly learned, everyone needs to go home and stay there.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent population health research center at the University of Washington, projects 1,060 COVID-19 deaths in South Carolina, peaking at 30 deaths on April 27 and then tapering back to zero on June 9.

That same organization projects South Carolina to have plenty of hospital beds statewide to handle the pandemic, but to be short of ICU beds, with a supply of 404 to meet a peak demand of 466.

In March, the people of Beaufort County lost jobs, income, investments, life savings, beach access, church services, and on and on the list goes.

In April, the loss will be in lives. A sizable number, but tiny percentage, of South Carolinians will die this month as a result of the COVID-19 virus.

We will say in our best Southern drawl since our governor and local leaders will not demand it:

Visitors, we love y’all dearly. You know we do. But it makes no sense in the world for you to be here in this month of death. Come back when you can stay longer. We’ll leave the light on for you.

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 2:39 PM.