12 MAY 21, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Avoiding a COVID-19 summer horror movie in NYC
There’s a great scene in the classic
horror film “Jaws” where the
town mayor is trying to convince
the chief not to close the beaches in
the middle of summer due to a shark
attack.
“You yell ‘barracuda,’ and everybody
says, ‘Huh? What?’” the mayor tells the
chief. “You yell ‘shark,’ we’ve got a panic
on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
Here in New York, amid our own
panic, Memorial Day — the unoffi cial
start to summer — is approaching.
No New Yorker wants to be stuck in a
stuff y home or apartment all season
long. We want to go out and get some
fresh air — and there’s no better place
to do that than the many amazing
beaches we have in Brooklyn, Queens,
the Bronx and Staten Island.
The problem this year, however,
is COVID-19, and the ease in which it
passes from one person to another.
We’ve struggled for nearly three
months now trying to get it under
control, and we’re fi nally on a slow,
steady decline in infections. Yet New
York state is still losing more than 100
people to this illness every day.
If you’ve ever been to Coney Island on
a hot Saturday in July and encountered
EDITORIAL
THE HOT TOPIC
STORY:
Popular restaurants in Rego Park and
Forest Hills permanently close due to
pandemic
SUMMARY:
Woodhaven House, an Irish-American
restaurant in Rego Park, announced it
won’t re-open aft er the COVID-19 pandemic
has passed.
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Not every beachgoer at Coney Island on May 16, 2020, chose to wear a mask during their day of fun in the
sun. Photo by Todd Maisel
the throngs of people on the sand and
the boardwalk, you can imagine the
nightmare health offi cials can visualize
with a highly contagious virus like
COVID-19 thrown into the mix.
Even so, Governor Andrew Cuomo
announced Friday that the state
beaches would reopen for Memorial
Day weekend, under strict crowd limitations.
Local governments were left to
make their own decisions for their own
beaches, and Mayor Bill de Blasio made
his Sunday: The city’s beaches will remain
closed to everyone except those
who want to take a seaside stroll.
De Blasio made the right call for New
York City. The virus is still too prevalent
here, and even if half-capacity
limits and tough-to-enforce mask requirements
are imposed, there’s still
a great risk of beach congregations
spurring a second massive wave of
coronavirus cases that would put us
right back where we started in the
crisis.
The beaches should open here this
summer. Hopefully, by late June, the
numbers will have dropped to the
point where that will be possible.
But if we open up too soon, we will
indeed have something worse than “a
panic on our hands on the Fourth of
July.”
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