As New York City has become the center of the coronavirus crisis in the United States many citizens, especially wealthier ones, have fled the city to second homes or rentals – but they have been met with hostility, fear and blame for potentially spreading the illness.

The flood of potentially disease-bearing city folk into countryside communities has even seen threats of violence and pleas from local politicians for them to stay away.

In Rensselaer county, a three-hour drive north of New York City, “many, many, many” people have recently arrived, the county executive, Steve McLaughlin, told the Guardian.

“They’re coming up and they’re occupying hotel rooms, Airbnbs, that type of thing,” McLaughlin said.

Rensselaer county had 51 cases as of Tuesday, McLaughlin said, “seven at least that are direct from New York City”.

Last week McLaughlin appealed to the New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, to ban all non-essential travel from New York City to upstate New York. Cuomo said no, but McLaughlin took matters into his own hands by issuing a public health order – anyone arriving from the city must contact local officials immediately.

Those arriving will then be subject to a 14-day quarantine, and will be checked on daily by law enforcement or health professionals. It remains to be seen if this will calm locals’ fears about New Yorkers spreading infection.

“You get a lot of people who are just plain scared who say: ‘Keep them out, keep them out,’” McLaughlin said.

“I take the more middle-of-the-road approach. Nobody has the authority at my level to do in a shelter-in-place kind of order. So, all right, you’re free to travel, just be considerate of your fellow American, your fellow New Yorker.”

It has been difficult to quell locals’ anger, however. The Rensselaer county Facebook page is awash with people calling for an all-out ban on people traveling north from New York City.

“Put the National Guard right at the damn Hudson River or other points, nobody crosses that line,” wrote one commenter.

“Think about our families too, STAY DOWN THERE.”

In one of the most extreme examples of resistance, a group of locals in Vinalhaven, Maine, attempted an unauthorized quarantine of some out-of-towners last week. The vigilantes chopped down a tree and laid it across a driveway, in an attempt to barricade the alleged visitors in their home.

As it turns out, the people subjected to the locals’ tree felling weren’t even from out of town – they were a group of three men who had been renting the house since summer while working nearby – but the New Jersey license plate on their vehicle was enough to trigger the locals.

The vigilante behavior triggered condemnation.

“This is not something to be celebrated,” said Genevieve McDonald, a member of the Maine house of representatives. “Now is not the time to develop or encourage an ‘us vs them’ mentality. Targeting people because of their license plates will not serve any of us well.”

To the east of New York City, towns in the Hamptons – a traditional escape for wealthy city dwellers – have seen their populations surge. Southampton has seen its population grow in recent weeks from 60,000 to 100,000.

In some area of the Hudson Valley and in the Catskills, north of New York City, rental prices have quadrupled as people flee the city.

Locals in these communities argue their hostility is not simply parochialism. Many harbor concerns about the ability of rural communities to manage an outbreak, given shortages of medical supplies, stretched hospitals and less access to food and groceries.

It isn’t just states to the north of New York that are seeing a surge of outsiders. At the end of March New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, pleaded with people not to travel to homes in the popular Jersey Shore area, after locals complained about the influx of New Yorkers.

Some places have taken more drastic measures. In March the island of North Haven, in Maine, banned all visitors, even those who own holiday homes.

“This was never about an us-vs-them-mentality,” Rick Lattimer, North Haven’s town administrator, told Politico. “It was about the fact that we are nowhere ready to handle an influx of people and their needs.”

Despite those pleas, a defensive mentality does seem to have sprung up in many areas, and it is difficult to see when it will recede.

“People need to stop coming out east. We’re full,” one woman opined on the East Hampton Star Facebook page.

“Watching people out there playing tennis in [Amagansett] on my way home from my essential job was infuriating. This is not a frikkin’ vacation. All that talk of the us v them and us playing nice, to score the summer bucks … pssh.”