24 THE QUEENS COURIER • MAY 21, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
editorial
Avoiding a COVID-19 summer horror movie in New York City
Th ere’s a great scene in the classic
horror fi lm “Jaws” where the town
mayor is trying to convince the chief
not to close the beaches in the middle
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VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS
JOSHUA A. SCHNEPS
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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 after the COVID-19 pandemic has
passed.
Reach: 14,543 (as of 5/18/20)
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.
Th e 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
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: Th e 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. Th e 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.
Th e 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.”
Photo by Todd Maisel
Not every beachgoer at Coney Island on May 16, 2020, chose to wear a mask during their day of fun in the sun.
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