Letter: Town Should Consider Face Mask Ordinance

lettertotheeditor

To the Editor:

Many assume that this charming Town is populated by mostly enlightened, educated, and empathic people. Unfortunately, the current pandemic has shown this assumption to be somewhat misguided. I am shocked at the folks in this Town who feel it is their Constitutional duty to defy health and safety recommendations related to Covid-19. This is particularly dangerous as we move to reopen our small businesses and consider limiting vehicular traffic on the Avenue while doing so.

The problem is that the density of pedestrian traffic on the Avenue makes social distancing difficult and the above referenced people make it impossible. We all know that masks are principally to protect others and not ourselves. We also know that masks, social distancing, hand hygiene, testing, and quarantine are all imperfect barriers to transmission; however, taken together they can be quite effective. As to masks, I look at them from a nautical perspective, those that choose to not wear them on the Avenue have a burden to yield the “right of way” to those who are wearing them, thus maintaining their social distance as the source of possible contagion. Better still, one should allow a wide berth to the mask wearer, who might be physically challenged and unable to avoid someone, or slower than the person passing them, or coming around a blind corner. Unfortunately, the non-wearers seem inordinately selfish and often pass closely, walk up to you, startle you at the corners, bump into you, etc. Shame on this intentional behavior, but even if accidental, it still puts folks at risk of a catastrophic medical result.

By way of analogy, it is certainly reasonable that The Town of Greenwich has seen fit to enumerate a specific Ordinance for dog walking (https://www.greenwichct.gov/DocumentCenter/View/8022/Leash-Laws-Dogs). Notably, Greenwich Avenue is one a group of specifically designated “restricted zones” with special and robust laws/rules to protect our health in this densely populated / trafficked area. One would think, that for the protection of our health, a similar restriction, obligating pedestrians to wear masks at all times, inside and outside, except when seated (to allow for eating), would be in the public interest to contain the spread of Covid-19 and its resultant morbidity and mortality. Clearly, there are too many folks on the Avenue that do not empathize with their community and voluntarily do the right thing, so a mandatory mask ordinance with enforcement and sanctions seems warranted. I fear that a failure to enact such an ordinance, coupled with more sophisticated and detailed contact tracing, will not only result in a local epicenter of disability and death, decimating those small businesses, but it will also reflect poorly on our Town leaders, who will have exacerbated the Covid-19’s spread through poor management of the reopening. Surely, this restriction is far more important for our public health, than our extra robust leash law in the Town’s already designated “restricted zones.”

I hope that we can find a way for us all to stay safe and well together through this difficult time.

David A. Shaulson
Greenwich

Related Posts
Loading...