Saturday’s tri-county COVID briefing was nice to see
When I saw the media advisory come out Friday night that Albany County Executive Dan McCoy would be joined by Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin and Schenectady County Manager Rory Fluman during a joint coronavirus press conference Saturday morning, I was shocked and intrigued to hear what they all would have to say together.
Knowing that cases continue to rise in each of the counties, it did seem like a good idea to get them all together to provide joint updates.
In the back of my mind, I thought they were all going to announce some new initiative about testing or something else, but they did not.
Instead, they all came together to emphasize working together and urged residents to do the right things to try to stop the spread in the Capital Region as much as possible.
McCoy did note that the counties do work together to help each other out by sharing PPE and other equipment, which is a smart idea.
McLaughlin brought up a good point and I’m surprised his point has been brought up more since the pandemic began earlier this year.
He spoke about how one case could affect all three counties. His example of someone working in Schenectady, living in Rensselaer County, and that infected person having contact with people in Albany, makes complete sense.
As someone who now lives in Schenectady County, I know that I travel to Albany County to see family and to go to various retail stores and I’ve been to Rensselaer County this year to cover stories for work as well.
McLaughlin also brought up another good message, which is that “help is on the way” in the form of a vaccine rolling out later this month. Although he stressed that it would take a while before the majority of the population would be vaccinated.
The county leaders urged wearing a mask when in public, practicing social distancing and proper handwashing.
Recently, I keep hearing people wondering why cases are spiking so much “if people are wearing masks in public”, and I try to explain to them that part of the reason is due to the fact that people who get infected are not being honest with contact tracers.
If people lie about who they were recently around then the contact tracers are not able to get more people in quarantine and those people that were recently around someone infected with the virus is now spreading the virus throughout the community by not quarantining.
It’s understandable that people are tired of following these protocols and that it’s been a stressful year for many people, but the year isn’t over yet and things can keep getting worse before it gets better.
My hope is that people will start taking the virus seriously again and do more of the right things for a few more months so that things can begin to go back to some normalcy in 2021.