12 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • FEBRUARY 2022
COVER FEATURE
LONG ISLAND AT A CROSSROADS AS LATEST COVID-19
A woman takes a coronavirus test at a pop-up testing site in New York on Jan. 12, 2022. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Call it a tale of two counties.
Democratic Suffolk County Executive
Steve Bellone touted the fact that the
wave of Omicron variant Covid-19 cases
has crested on Long Island, with the
number of new diagnoses decreasing in
the wake of the holiday surge largely fueled
by family gatherings. But he also
cautioned that double-digit daily death
counts remain a lagging indicator that
the region isn’t out of the woods yet.
But on the other side of the county line,
Republican Nassau County Executive
Bruce Blakeman, whose first days in office
in January featured massive lines of
residents lining up for free at-home test
kits, said Nassau is back to normal and
has declared war on New York State’s
mask mandates that are intended to curb
the spread of the virus.
“To put it in perspective how quickly the
Omicron wave swept over us, on Christmas
Eve we had 416 people in our hospitals
in Suffolk County. That number rose
to 737 just one week later on New Year’s
Day,” Suffolk County Executive Steve
Bellone told the Long Island Association
(LIA)’s State of the Region Hybrid
Breakfast audience on Jan. 21. “I’ve never
seen the numbers move that quickly.”
Feb. 7 marks two years since Stony
Brook University Hospital recorded its
first suspected case of coronavirus in a
patient who visited the emergency room
— a month before Long Island’s first confirmed
case of Covid-19. Since then, residents
have seen pandemic restrictions
come and go, but the return of mask
mandates sparked the latest flashpoint
between progressive and conservatives.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul called
the mask mandates the “common-sense,
right thing to do” and “not permanent.”
But Blakeman, who spoke after Bellone
and Hochul at the same LIA event,
days earlier had signed an executive order
that he said allows school districts’
boards of education to vote whether or
not to enforce mask wearing.
“Yes, we have seen the ravages of Covid
19, but we cannot be afraid,” Blakeman
said. “We cannot hide under the
bed. We have to learn to live with the
pandemic.”
He touted the county giving out 250,000
free at-home Covid-19 tests and more
than 100,000 N-95 masks to local
educators.
“We wanna keep our schools open,” he
said. “We have to take into account when
we think about things that we are doing
to protect people, the social consequences
of what we do … such as how do
these regulations and restrictions that
government imposes, how do they affect
the emotional well-being and anxiety of
the people that we govern?”
Blakeman’s measure led to the Massapequa
Board of Education’s vote against
enforcement after the mandate expires.
After a public war of words between
Hochul and Blakeman over the mask
“I’ve never seen
the numbers move
that quickly,” said
Suffolk County
Executive Steve
Bellone said.
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