EDITORIAL
Rapid testing will help restore normalcy
We’re nowhere near the
Readers: Healthcare workers are heroes!
COURIER LIFE, APRIL 10-16, 2020 13
Healthcare workers patronizing
Park Slope’s La Bagel Delight
are treated to free meals
during the ongoing coronavirus
outbreak, as members of
the community have begun paying
for their food in advance for
when doctors and nurses arrive
at the eatery.
“Yesterday, the line was out
of the door. The neighborhood
took care of a lot of nurses,” said
co-owner Frank Bavaro. “It’s a
wonderful thing that people are
doing.”
Park Slopers have been calling
into and adding anywhere
from $5 to $100 onto a gift card,
which has now been used to purchase
dozens of bagels, lunches,
and cups of coffee for medical
workers on the frontline of the
pandemic.
Readers experssed themselves
online:
All the folks who work here are
truly AMAZING. Exceptional customer
service, and just wonderful
human being. Thank you all!
Geraldine Buchanan
This is so sweet!! God Bless them
all!
Kathleen Heaney Ventrice
Awesome!!
Mary G Woods
A park for who?
A north Brooklyn legislator
wants to use funds from the
newly-enacted state budget to
save a Metropolitan Transportation
Authority storage facility at
the Bushwick Inlet from becoming
a high-rise development and
instead turn it into open space.
Assemblyman Joe Lentol hopes
to purchase the site at 40 Quay St.
near Kent Avenue as part of the
budget’s so-called Restore Mother
Nature Environmental Bond Act,
which would make $200 million
available from the sale of state
bonds to conserve open space —
something that’s become even
more important in the age of the
coronavirus, the Greenpoint pol
noted.
“The coronavirus crisis is
teaching us how important open
space is to our community and
our health. I fought for inclusion
of funds in the Environmental
Bond Act so that with its passage,
we have resources to help us obtain
this important plot of land,”
Lentol said in a statement.
The roughly 1.7 acre-site could
become part of a sprawling waterfront
lawn with the adjacent
city-owned Bushwick Inlet Park,
and would offer more open space
amid the surge of development
along the north Brooklyn waterfront,
according to a steward of
that green space and longtime environmental
advocate.
“It would be that beautiful
green expanse at the inlet,” said
the co-chair of Friends of Bushwick
Inlet Park, Steve Chesler.
Readers experssed themselves
online:
And then the developers come
waltzing in and want to build yet
another tower for the rich with no
additional hospitals being added.
Mitchell Rentzler
This should become the site of a
lot of housing.
The same microneighborhood
sure gets gobs of money for parks
thrown at it while the rest of north
Brooklyn gets nothing.
Mike Cherepko
Great idea. Good to see an
elected official with a good idea
and pursue it!
Respect Brooklyn
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SOUND OFF TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS AND COMMENTS FROM OUR READERS
end of the coronavirus
outbreak, but there
seems to be enough confi -
dence in New York that we’ve
reached “the end of the beginning”
of this crisis.
Governor Andrew Cuomo
has said repeatedly in recent
days that New York’s apex in
coronavirus cases is nigh;
the only question is whether
cases will start to drop or plateau
within the next couple of
weeks.
There’s now talk about
how to restart New York City
and State after weeks of social
distancing orders, self-quarantines
and business shutdowns.
As we said in our editorial
Sunday, the temptation
is to get everything up and
running right away, as it was
before, but the nature of the
disease makes that a fool’s errand.
How fast we restart, however,
will come down to one
thing, at least in Cuomo’s eyes:
Testing.
For weeks, tens of thousands
of New Yorkers a day
have been tested for coronavirus
— but the test isn’t widely
available to anyone. Most tests
are being reserved for the
most seriously ill New Yorkers
and those potentially exposed
to COVID-19 who have serious
underlying conditions.
However, if you have mild
symptoms or no symptoms at
all, it’s almost impossible to
get tested in New York state.
With 19 million people in
the state and more than 8 million
in this city alone, there
are untold numbers of people
here who have the virus but
are asymptomatic; had it but
recovered; or haven’t had it
all. The problem is we don’t
know for sure into which category
everyone falls — and
that uncertainty puts lives at
risk.
A quick, minimally invasive
testing system will be the
key to getting New York back
on its feet. Cuomo’s looking to
private industry to help make
that happen here, because it
doesn’t seem like a high priority
for the Trump White
House.
Expanded testing in places
like Germany and South Korea
have helped curb the outbreak
in their countries. New
York can replicate that success
and demonstrate to the rest of
the United States the urgency
for such a program.
Our return to normalcy
and the demise of coronavirus
depend on it.
Testing for the coroanvirus is an imperatiev fi rst step to returning to
normalcy. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
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