Maine Covid 19 Thread (Lincoln, Lee: hotels, car, parking)

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

... This IS impractical for all but the fortunate few who have access to non-commercial lodging, and visitors without summer homes in Maine will stay away.... or lie. Government programs should never be setup to encourage citizens to lie or cheat; that is BAD government policy.

This is what it is.

Our governor has declared a 'state of emergency' [otherwise known as Martial Law] to give her extreme powers, and now she wants to hold onto those powers as long as she can.

She has the authority to call out the National Guard to setup machine gun nest road block on every street. But Mainers chafe at that kind of abuse and we are all armed, so that would cause a lot of deaths.

[Maine Writer]

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

No, this is not being understood. If you do not own a 2nd home, or do not have a friend or relative to let you stay, then IF you wish to abide by the rules, then you cannot stay anywhere in Maine, even while awaiting test results. Commercial lodging is closed to outsiders who do not attest to have a negative test from a sample taken less then 72 hours prior.

There's a difference between shut down as was stated and limited. I stand by my comment that the state is not shut down.

[7th generation]

The latest directive from our leaders.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Maine Writer reminds us:

"There's a difference between shut down as was stated and limited. I stand by my comment that the state is not shut down."

And that difference is our delusional governor. We are not shut down. Queen Janet just wishes we were shut down. Maine is simply ignoring Janet Mills.

[Maine Writer]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

And that difference is our delusional governor. We are not shut down. Queen Janet just wishes we were shut down. Maine is simply ignoring Janet Mills.

Some folks are ignoring her, others are still wearing masks and distancing. The state isn't closed, and as a single entity it's not ignoring her. Restaurants that can open aren't always filling up because a lot of people still want curbside and take out. Balance. I bet a lot of business owners who depend on a third of the year to make their money are questioning their choices. They should be. It was always risky. We've always known a bad tourist season would kill some businesses.

[roadrat]

Anyone think that when this is over laws should be rewritten to limit the governor's power in emergency situations?
The cold war is long over, along with the threat of nuclear war.
A "State of Emergency" should be limited to 15 days and after that the legislators need to approve any extensions, also the state legislators need to be called into session and stay in session thru the entire emergency. A new flu should not be an excuse to flush the state constitution down the toilet.
Seriously what's to stop a governor from taking office declaring an emergency, disbanding the legislators and ruling from decree for there entire term, if you can extend emergency declarations indefinitely....Nothing.

[nm9stheham]

Note that the NC statutes are written in exactly this way. The governor can declare an initial 30 day state of emergency, and can allow local officials to do the same. If another 30 day extension is desired, then the gov has to file for it in a certain state court.



What is getting me is that if you bore down into the stat's of what infection rates are where, and who is likely to carry the disease, then the risk to Mainer's is more from themselves than outsiders at this point in time. In the last few days, the new case rate per xxx population is as high in Maine citizens as it is in NY. Then when you factor in the demographics of the populations who are being most infected %-wise, versus who will travel on vacations, the probabilities of outsiders bringing in infection goes down even more.

[mainegrl2011]

Imo the governor expects voluntary compliance. The only enforcement I've heard about was when Rick Savage lost his liquor license (maybe other required business licenses) when he opened before governor said he could open. I'm pretty sure he eventually got them back and reopened. People seem to have very definite personal opinions about the whole situation including wearing or not wearing masks. Some businesses require them; others do not.

[nm9stheham]

FWIW... Just for some more perspective, I ran some numbers on the tourism COVID thing:

Average new cases per day over the last week per 1 million population (which is reflective of the current prevalance rate):
Maine : 32 per 1M
NY/NJ/MA/CT : 48 per 1M (This number truly has plummeted in the last several weeks, and something like 2/3 of Maine visitors are from these 4 states)
Add in other nearby states: You end up in range of 40-50 new cases per day in the areas around Maine. (It varies with which states you put in the mix.)

So now factor in the number of tourists per day in Maine, both day-trippers and overnighters: It is in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 per day on average in the main season. (This number comes from both overall tourism numbers and lodging statistics.)

Use that number of visitors with the out-of-state prevalence rate to estimate the new number of cases entering Maine per day on average IF the situation is wide open for visitors with no restrictions:8 to 12 new cases per day on average being brought into Maine by visitors if things are wide open (This is without factoring in demographics of the likely traveling population that will lower that number a bit further.)

This is as suspected...... even with wide open tourism right now, on average, Mainers are at much more risk to catch this from other Mainers than from non-Mainers. The infections rates in the surrounding areas have dropped that much in the last several weeks. And even if my numbers are off 2:1, this still holds true.

Cost to not open up is in the range of over $2 billion dollars if the resulting season if only a small % of normal tourism, out of gross revenues in the range of $6-$7 billion. Lost tax revenues will likely cost Mainers an average of $400 per person, or around $1000 per family.

[mainegrl2011]

There have been 13 total cases (10 recovered, 1 death) in Hancock County, Maine. That is home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. There are varying opinions, but some people I know are more concerned about tourists and summer people bringing the virus with them than a concern about catching it from a year round Hancock County resident. Some are more concerned about the economic impact of limiting tourism. https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/inf...onavirus.shtml