COASTAL OBSERVER

Five years ago this week, a global pandemic hit home in South Carolina when Gov. Henry McMaster closed schools. 

Dr. Desmond Young, a pulmonologist with Tidelands Health, was on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus. 

Young was scared for his family, his co-workers and just in general.

“We didn’t know how bad this was going to be,” Young said. “No one could have predicted how bad this was going to be.”

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.1 million people have died of the coronavirus in the United States, including 17,869 in South Carolina.

“It was traumatic for everyone to realize the width and depth of this pandemic that quickly unfolded from being a concern to a region like China to a worldwide situation that we quickly got pulled into,” said the Very Rev. Paul MacNeil, pastor of Precious Blood of Christ Catholic Parish. “We had parishioners that died of COVID and it really affected us. It was real, and it was sad.”

When the governor closed schools on March 15, 2020, he said it would just be for a short period of time. He quickly extended the closure through April. On April 22, McMaster announced that schools would not reopen to finish the school year. 

Georgetown County students didn’t re-enter classrooms until late September. 

On March 23, the first two confirmed cases of the coronavirus were reported in Georgetown County. By mid-June there were more than 100 confirmed cases in the county. The first death due to the coronavirus in the county occurred in early April.

Gatherings of more than 10 people were quickly banned.

Georgetown County closed its offices and library branches on March 18. Library branches reopened on June 1 with restrictions on the number people allowed inside buildings at the same time. Everyone was also required to wear masks.

Georgetown County and the town of Pawleys Island banned short-term rentals on March 27. 

McMaster closed beach accesses on March 30. They stayed closed for the month of April.

In June, confirmed cases in the United States increased from 12,148 to 36,297. In Georgetown County, confirmed cases increased from 76 to 458.

In mid-June, Fourth of July parades in Pawleys Island and Murrells Inlet were canceled.

At the end of June, County Council approved an ordinance requiring masks to be worn in food service establishments, retail stores, grocery stores and pharmacies. 

Weeks later, the city of Georgetown announced that it would not issue permits for any outdoor events for the rest of the year, dashing hopes that the Wooden Boat Show would go on as planned in October.

After a vaccine was created, Tidelands Health began vaccinating workers on Dec. 16. In January the vaccine became available to first responders, critical infrastructure workers and people 75 and older.

As the vaccine became available on a larger scale, things began to return to normal. 

Students returned to classrooms four days a week on Feb. 1, 2021. The county ordinance requiring masks to be worn expired at the end of April.  

To this day people continue to get diagnosed with the coronavirus, and many are hospitalized.

“It’s not nearly as bad,” Young said. “Thankfully it’s so much different. I don’t think COVID scares us as much anymore.”

“Our lives really changed in a way that during our lifetime we had never experienced before,” MacNeil said. “I think the next pandemic – please God will be a long ways away – hopefully we’ll have better best practices in dealing with it that are mindful of the cost of quarantining and isolating and the benefits.”

The doctor

As news of the pandemic spread after COVID-19 was identified in China in December 2019, Young said there was a lot of “confusion” about how to handle it. At the time, they knew it was a virus, but didn’t know how it was transmitted or how to treat it effectively.

“The helplessness of not being able to cure it was problematic for all of us,” Young added.

Young recalled the “helpless feeling” of only being able to treat the symptoms of the coronavirus, not the underlying cause. 

He has close friends in the medical profession that either took leaves of absence or early retirement or changed jobs because of the stress associated with the pandemic and watching so many people die.

“They felt, like a lot of us did, helpless,” Young said. “It takes an emotional toll on you when they’re dying and you’re trying to console family members. You’re trying to help these folks and sometimes you can’t.”

Young expects the coronavirus will be in history books alongside the likes of the bubonic plague pandemic and HIV/AIDS.

“Looking back, this was a historic moment in the world and I was in it deep. Not much has really stuck with me more than this will,” he said. “If I look back on my life and think of a moment in time, it was two or three years of life that was dedicated to taking care of these patients.” 

The first responder

The most challenging time in Doug Eggiman’s career as Midway Fire Rescue chief was during the pandemic.

“It was probably the toughest thing I ever had to deal with,” Eggiman said. “There was no endpoint. Nobody knew when it was going to get better or going to stop.”

Midway’s firefighters and EMTs never knew when a call might involve someone infected with the coronavirus. Despite that, no one ever refused to respond, Eggiman said. He’s proud of them for that.

“Our people were faced to going into these environments with this unknown virus,” he added. “Through all of that our guys and gals didn’t blink, didn’t falter.”

Keeping a full staff was a challenge at Midway. Several times one-third of the department tested positive.

“It drove home the seriousness of communicable diseases and being prepared for it,” Eggiman said. “This carried it to an incredibly different level.”

Due to the increasing number of patients at Waccamaw and Georgetown hospitals, Midway EMTs would sometimes have to take a patient to Conway Medical.

Midway also adjusted its procedures. Firefighters and EMTs wore masks and there were enhanced cleaning procedures such as taking an ambulance out of service until it was decontaminated.

“We were constantly changing the environment they worked in,” Eggiman said. “In true fire/EMS fashion, they went straight forward and got it done.”

Adding to Eggiman’s concerns were guidelines from the CDC that seemed to change every week.

“A lot of what we had to do was on the fly,” he said.

Eggiman’s 35-year career with Midway ended on Jan. 1, 2022.

The priest

In order to give last rites to a parishioner in the intensive care unit of the hospital during the pandemic, MacNeil had to wear two sets of personal protection equipment and use a Q-tip instead of his thumb to place holy oil on the patient’s forehead. 

“I felt like a robot,” MacNeil said. “It felt so impersonal and yet it was the best that we could do.”

When he returned home he made sure to wash everything he was wearing when he was at the hospital.

When Precious Blood was forced to shut down due to a restriction on large gatherings, MacNeil, with the help from a handful of people, started live streaming Masses from inside the empty sanctuary.

“It was the weirdest thing in the world,” he said. “I was longing to be with people but I realized at the other end of the camera were real people.”

The church eventually opened with everyone wearing masks and practicing social distancing. 

“We adjusted as time unfolded” MacNeil said. “As traumatic as it was, what it did instill in us was gratitude to be able to gather once we were able to gather, and an appreciation of the importance of community. People helping one another was beautiful to see.”

Precious Blood was also forced to shut down Father Pat’s Kitchen for a short time. When it reopened bagged lunches were passed out in a drive-thru format. Eventually the nonprofit returned to normal operations, but kept a carryout option, MacNeil said.

The business owner

Josh Quigley, the co-owner of Quigley’s Pint and Plate, The Quad and BisQit, remembers it was St. Patrick’s Day in 2020 when he found out the state was shutting down all the restaurants’ dining rooms the next day. The only option would be carryout.

“I remember going home that night and thinking, ‘my God. What am I going to do?’” he said. “It was strange. I woke up with a plan.”

Quigley laid off all of his employees – except managers – so they could collect unemployment. That’s what the state recommended to business owners, he said.

“Even with doing carryout, even if it went as well as we could ever have hoped, there would have been no way to employ all those people,” Quigley added. “I never in a million years thought I would be in that situation.”

Quigley paid all of his managers the same amount, regardless of what they were making before, and they all became cooks and helped with carryout.

“In order for us to remain viable moving forward we have to survive this and this is how we survive,” he said.

Quigley also continued to provide a meal, or multiple meals, every day for his employees who had been furloughed.

“If they were out of work, we were going to feed their family,” he said. “We made the decision that if we were going to go down, we were going to go down in flames and say we did the right thing.”

Quigley also cleared out the dining room in Quigley’s Pint and Plate and set up a supermarket for his employees who had been furloughed. Free items included baby formula, diapers, food and toilet paper.

“I just kind of felt like we were being presented with an opportunity that really was going to define how we approach things and how much control we thought we had,” he said.

When people found out what Quigley was doing they made donations. Some people dropped off money or supplies. Others mailed checks.

“That was pretty inspiring,” he said.

Quigley also started a free community meal, which continues to this day. 

“I just saw this as sort of an opportunity,” Quigley said. “There were so many people in need, so many people in need that never thought they would be in need.”

During the pandemic, Quigley gave away 80 to 100 fully cooked family-style meals every Tuesday. People paid what they could, or paid nothing.

Other restaurants followed in his footsteps, providing free meals on other days.

“It became a thing and it was kind of cool to see because there was a way for people to get food,” he said.

Quigley now serves about 20 to 25 community meals a week, although preparing and packaging the meals costs about twice what it did five years ago.

“That’s sort of our lasting effect out of COVID,” he said.