I know everyone is sick and tired of talking about coronavirus; I am too. But the obvious fact is that it is still a serious issue across the country, even if not in New Jersey, and major restrictions are in place to keep it from coming back to our neck of the woods.
I’m not opposed to having some restrictions – I think officials need to ensure that we don’t get clobbered again. But I think the way Governor Murphy is going about it in New Jersey is probably not the best, and it is causing serious, unnecessary, and irreparable damage to our small business owners.
When looking at the daily Covid-19 numbers provided by the Department of Health, one thing is very obvious: different parts of New Jersey are experiencing different levels of new coronavirus cases. And when you look at data from the past three months, you can see that it has always been this way; certain areas were being affected more, some less.
The problem is that Governor Murphy, when deciding which restrictions to keep in place and which to lift, has had all of New Jersey under the same orders. It’s not totally crazy – New Jersey isn’t a large state like California. But still, because different sections of New Jersey are affected less than others, it’s not unfair to ask that the governor impose restrictions different restrictions on different areas based on the data being received from those areas.
Now, you might argue that it wouldn’t make sense to do so, because one can just travel from one area to another. But I’m not sure that would be much of a problem because people have practically stopped traveling. I used to go to the northern part of the state multiple times a month; I haven’t been there since March. Many, probably most, others are just the same.
If the governor would place restrictions on different areas of the state based on the severity of the outbreak in those areas, businesses that are currently struggling to stay afloat can have a much better chance at surviving this crisis.
What you are saying makes a lot of sense.
This is not a bad proposal, but the problem would be that given how hard hit Lakewood was and it’s population density it would be one of the shut down quarantined areas.
The problem is that this proposal is intuitive and actually makes sense, so it can’t be implemented by the Government.
If a store a half hour away is open and near me isn’t, I would drive there. The state isn’t that large and people want to get out of the house. You are a yachid, lots of people are moving about.
I went shopping at one of the local supermarkets and I would say 80 to 90% of people were not wearing masks nor keeping social distancing. I was shocked, to say the least. They looked at me like I was a freak and they don’t have to keep 6 feet away. God forbid I should try to nicely comment and was met with a nasty and condescending remarks. I suppose Hashem will give them what they deserve. Don’t tell me they all tested negative. Say what you want but, to me, this is a serious Chilul Hashem.
I’m truly sorry about your experience in the grocery yesterday- I also went to a grocery and found a much, much higher percentage of masked shoppers, and certainly everyone was respectful with regard to social distancing..I agree that we should be even better in all areas, but BH I don’t think your particular experience is typical…davening for everyone to stay healthy and well!!
You have to excuse our poor governor, Governor CuomoMurphy, for following the leftist playbook of one size fits all, which ends up being one size fits none.
The fact remains if there was honesty with the numbers, we would see that the overall numbers are not as bad as they are putting them. Don’t jump me by telling me you know people who were nifter. We all do, but by now we should all know that just because we were told it was Chinese Wuhan virus related, does not mean that it really was Chinese virus. We all know that because hospitals are able to make so much more with a Chinese Wuhan virus diagnosis, that so many things became Chinese Wuhan virus instead of the truth.
We also know about all the positives that are being reported where the person didn’t even end up taking the test! There definitely is fraud in this whole thing.