In November we saw the trend. Ever upward the rate of new active positive COVID cases recorded each day was climbing. Quickly, the active daily positive case rate surpassed that of the same daily rate one year prior.

“What are you going to do?” we asked our local government officials. “Vaccines!” they shouted. Okay, but what else? What about reopening mass test sites, what about distributing PPE and rapid COVID tests? What about anything else? You could hear a pin drop, or maybe it was an empty booster needle.

On the county and state websites, again you saw a lot of information about vaccinations, but testing info was buried. Then the holidays came and with it the inevitable: COVID positivity spiking like crazy. More variants, more sickness combinations, and nothing but vague rules by the CDC and more vaccine noise.

We’re not knocking the vaccines, of course. Everyone at the Shawangunk Journal is vaccinated and boosted, and they do save lives, prevent hospitalization. But as we’ve reported, vaccines are not a catch all, and some other vital components of the pandemic response still need to be maintained, or even expanded. But it appears as if, despite all the signals pointing to exactly what we’re experiencing, our county and state governments were unprepared to combat this latest post-holiday, mid-Omicron wave.

First let’s look at rapid test kit disparities, something that could’ve helped many people know whether or not it was safe to travel for the holidays. Ulster County gave out these tests to its municipalities to distribute the day before Christmas. But Orange and Sullivan counties did not… not until the post-holiday surge was in full swing.

Here’s a little close-to-home anecdote. On December 23, a Shawangunk Journal reporter tested positive for COVID. They had last been in the office on December 21. So we walked the two doors down grabbed a couple of rapid tests from Wawarsing Town Hall to make sure that the rest of us were okay. On December 27, another staff member, who lives 45 minutes south in Orange County, became very ill. Sniffling, sneezing, a relentless dry cough, but she had used up the free tests already to make sure she wasn’t bringing COVID home for Christmas. Orange County didn’t announce any public testing distribution at that time, and they wouldn’t for another two weeks. And, of course, all of the area pharmacies were emptied out, testing facilities were booked through the month, and buying a kit online was another two-week wait. After a week of being still very much sick, she was finally able to get a rapid test when one of her Ulster County-based coworkers very kindly drove down to deliver her one. Luckily, even after all those headaches, the test came back negative. Nearly a week after that, she was able to schedule a PCR test with her healthcare provider to confirm the negative result. But even getting that test was a headache.

If you manage to find the COVID testing link on the NYS government website, it’ll show you testing locations near you. The weeks following Christmas, the only “testing” locations listed were pharmacies and places like QuestDiagnostics. The testing locations would say “testing available,” but when you clicked on the pharmacy, and after signing up, only then would you see that, no, there actually wasn’t any testing available there; they were already booked up. But you wouldn’t know that unless you went to each individual pharmacy, even after going through all of their sign-up requirements. A local healthcare provider offered drive-through testing, but you first had to schedule a telehealth visit, and those appointments could only be made through a special hotline that stopped operating once the day’s appointments were booked up. If you did reach someone, who would mostly likely say, “sorry, all booked up again,” you were told to call at 5 a.m. the next day. Just what a sick person wants to do.

Sullivan County did eventually distribute rapid tests to its municipalities, and Orange County gave out its own supply to residents this past Saturday, but only after announcing the distribution date and time the evening before. This week, finally, a state-run mass testing site went back online in our neck of the woods (SUNY New Paltz), but why the heck did it take so long when a winter surge had been forecasted for months?

Apparently even after two years of this, we’re still just hoping for the best, despite getting the worst.