Coronaplague in Maine

A friend has escaped with his family to Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park and quiet summer playground of the rich (notably the Rockefellers). The airport was busy for a time pumping Jet A into the Gulfstreams that were dropping off elite New Yorkers fleeing Wuhan-on-the-Hudson.

If the state-by-state model is correct, those who fled to Maine made a wise choice. The state is not forecast to run out of either hospital or ICU beds (neither are neighboring New Hampshire or Vermont).

It looks as though the trails of Acadia are still open, even if the park roads and carriage roads are closed. The governor has issued a “stay at home” order, but the local sheriff says:

First and foremost, lets quash some rumors out of the gate. There are absolutely, positively NO plans to participate in random motor vehicle stops and/or check points to actively look for and arrest violators of the Governor’s order. Although this an order issued by the Governor, you retain your constitutional rights and we respect that. Please note, however, we are sworn to uphold the Constitution and laws of the State of Maine and, to that end, we are prepared to enforce the Governor’s order in the event of blatant and overtly defiant violations.

From the police log:

A Lamoine woman called the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office Monday with concerns she had about neighbors having more than 10 guests at a time at their residences despite Governor Janet Mills’ recommendation against such gatherings amid the coronavirus outbreak.

I wonder if these states break the model. As of 4/8, Vermont was supposed to have experienced peak resource demand on April 1. A total of 47 Vermonters will die, say the prophets. That’s out of a population of more than 625,000. The disease will never spread around Burlington, a reasonably dense urban environment that is packed with visitors? People who live in Southern New Hampshire often commute to plague-afflicted Boston for work. Yet the entire state is supposed to have only 66 deaths out of 1.35 million residents. The model assumes social distancing through May 2020, but the deaths are through August 4, 2020. If society reopens on June 1, won’t there be exponential growth in New Hampshire seeded from those who commute to Boston? (Even now, righteous Democrats are driving to Walmart and other places in New Hampshire so as to avoid paying sales tax here in the Land of Big Government.)

How do people in this lonely-yet-connected corner of New England escape COVID-19?