Health offi cials address Brooklyn uptick
Left: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams hands out a mask in Borough Park. Top right: A health worker tests a man in Borough Park; Bottom right: Amateur radio host Heshy Tischler
heckles city health offi cials at a Gravesend press conference to address recent upticks. Left: REUTERS/ Carlo Allegri; Top right: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid;Bottom right: Photo by Paul Frangipane
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
Anti-maskers heckled
city health offi cials during a
southern Brooklyn press conference
meant to address a recent
uptick in COVID-19 cases
on Sept. 25 — forcing the medical
professionals to cut the
gathering short.
Various offi cials leading
the charge against the virus
within the Five Boroughs met
at Gravesend Park shortly before
noon, ostensibly to alert
community members about
new measures in response to
the spike of cases in Brooklyn
and Queens — but shortly
before things kicked off, local
resident and amateur radio
host Heshy Tischler showed up
fi lming himself bombastically
denying the continued existence
of COVID-19 in the area.
Tischler, who continuously
disrupted the press conference,
called doctors and city
offi cials in attendance “liars”
as they spoke about the troubling
increase in positive test
cases in the “Ocean Parkway
Cluster”, which includes areas
like Williamsburg, Midwood,
Flatbush, and Borough Park.
Caribbean L 16 ife, Oct. 2-8, 2020
The conspiracy theorist
was eventually joined by a
handful of other maskless attendees
who questioned the
validity of the science, causing
NYC Health + Hospitals
head Michael Katz to launch
stern warnings about the seriousness
of the pandemic.
“I witnessed as my 11 hospitals
took care of thousands
and thousands of people with
COVID in March and April,
and many of those people we
lost. They died. Their families
were left without them because
of the tremendous infection,”
he told the crowd. “We’re here
because we care about health.
This is the issue that matters
the most, we don’t want people
to lose members of their community.”
Katz also spoke of how his
father-in-law died of coronavirus,
but drew no sympathy
from Tischler, who continued
to antagonize the medical professional,
social media video
shows.
“He’s lying. You do not lie.
Get the hell out of my community,
you fi lthy animal,” yelled
the heckler.
The commissioner of the
city’s Department of Health
and Mental Hygiene also used
the ruckus occasion to warn
that the cluster of outbreaks
in the six communities —
which also includes Queens’
Kew Gardens and Edgemere-
Far Rockaway — mark a tipping
point for the city’s containment
efforts.
“What we worry about is
that, if this growth continues, it
will turn into more widespread
community transmission, both
in these neighborhoods as well
as potentially citywide,” said
Dr. Dave Chokshi.
Over the past few weeks,
Chokshi said, his department
has made hundreds of thousands
of robocalls to people in
these communities — representing
just a small part of a
larger outreach program that
aims to encourage local residents
to follow basic health
guidelines.
“Today I want to be very
clear. This may be the most
precarious moment that we’re
facing since we have emerged
from lockdown,” he said. “We
can deliver these messages,
we can continue to have the
conversations, but this takes a
group response.”
“We want to save lives,”
Katz added, in between jeers
from Tischler and his fellow
anti-maskers.
The offi cials did manage to
announce a cadre of new anticoronavirus
efforts, such as
increased mask giveaways,
and increasing testing capacity
in the area — but ultimately
cut the press conference
short, as Chokshi and his
companions became too bothersome
to overcome.
On Sept. 28, Health Department
offi cials said the borough
is home to nearly one quarter
of all positive COVID-19 cases
in New York City over the last
two weeks.
ZIP codes in Gravesend,
Bensonhurst, and Sheepshead
Bay are now experiencing
coronavirus upticks in
addition to four other Brooklyn
hotspots announced last
week: Williamsburg, Midwood,
Flatbush, and Borough
Park. The upticks have caused
the city’s daily rate of positive
virus tests to rise to 3.25 percent
on Sept. 29 — a rate not
seen in New York City since
early June.
Health offi cials said they
will continue to monitor
spikes in coronavirus-related
hospitalizations.
The mayor announced
Wednesday, Sept. 30 that the
city will deploy almost 1,000
agents to check mask compliance,
hand out face coverings,
and potentially fi ne violators
in the nine affected ZIP codes.
An estimated 950 enforcers
— consisting of some 400
cops, 300 offi cials with the
NYC Health and Hospital’s
Test and Trace Corps, and another
250 city staffers — will
be out in the borough hotspots
distributing masks, providing
information on the coronavirus,
and issuing summonses
in cases of noncompliance, according
to de Blasio.
Over the weekend of Sept.
26, Borough President Eric
Adams was spotted handing
out masks in Borough Park.
Additional reporting by
Paul Frangipane, Kevin Duggan
and Alejandra O’Connell
Domenech.
Health