In Other Words, Leadership by Shannon A. Mullen

Author:Shannon A. Mullen [Mullen, Shannon A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“…the continued slight let-up…”

A slow-moving blizzard was heading for Maine on the night of February 1, after burying Manhattan under seventeen inches of snow, more than the city’s total the previous winter.[1] In the Blaine House that evening Governor Mills wrote in her journal that she was savoring “the anticipation of a coming snowstorm — cozy, anxious, apprehensive but strangely comforting.” Much of New England was due for more than a foot of snow, raising concerns that COVID-19 vaccine shipments would be delayed and potentially compromised.[2] Medical facilities in some parts of the state had already canceled coveted appointments.[3] Apart from the imminent danger and inconvenience of such a big storm, the governor found poetry in the stillness that preceded it. “A beautiful snow approaches, curious crows amassing on the tallest treetops,” she wrote. “Big crows perched on thin twigs…squawking at the nearing squall, flirting with wind, objecting to a change in flight plan.”

The storm advanced into Maine that night and lingered through the next day, as Dr. Shah held another CDC briefing, including an update on the state’s vaccine program. He looked very much in need of a nap as he told reporters that, to date, more than 158,000 “total shots in arms” had been given and just over 3 percent of residents were fully vaccinated.[4] That effort, he explained, would take “a significant leap forward” as the first of many “high-throughput, public-facing community vaccination sites” opened in Maine. Two of the state’s largest healthcare networks planned to start mass clinics that week, the first in a convention and event center where rallies had been held for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race and the second at a defunct horse-racing track.[5] The clinics’ operators planned to administer at least nine hundred vaccine doses per day from the start, with the potential to expand to more than five thousand daily.[6]

Dr. Shah also noted that the state’s COVID-19 metrics had continued to improve, including a 25 percent decline in the hospitalization rate since mid-January. When a reporter asked if that progress was “a reason for optimism,” Dr. Shah sucked his teeth, groaned, and shook his head. “Gosh, you know…I am at my core an optimist,” he hedged. “It’s hard in this situation because so much of me wants to say things are getting better and indeed, numerically, there’s no doubt that they are.” He noted that the daily number of new cases had remained “quite low” and the state’s positivity rate had “come down significantly,” but there was no telling “how permanent or durable” those gains would be. “Or let me frame it even more starkly — I am concerned that these findings…are in fact a pause rather than a stop.” The new strain discovered in the UK had since proved to be especially contagious and was now circulating in more than two dozen American states.[7]

Ashirah shared Dr. Shah’s wariness, referring to the improving metrics in her first letter that month as “the continued slight let-up of the pandemic.

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