‘You’re not making any sense anymore!’
OK, this just isn’t making sense right now.
New Jersey’s rate of transmission — the number of coronavirus-infected people passing the virus on to someone else — has spiked in the last week. Worrisome? You damn well bet.
And as a result, Gov. Phil Murphy has stepped into the breach, rolling back indoor capacity numbers. Now, it’s 25% of occupancy or no more than 25 people, down from a 100.
This is a serious rollback, and it sucks, and … and maybe Murphy didn’t step into the breach. Maybe he stepped on a rake.
Why? Because while he’s capping indoor gatherings at 25 people, he’s allowing exceptions. Like weddings. Religious ceremonies. Funerals. Political activities.
Furthermore, he’s still insisting schools open their very-indoor doors in a month. In fact, in the same press conference where he announced the indoor gathering news, he also said kids will be mandated to be masked when they come into the petri dish — er, classrooms — in September.
So to be clear: No indoor gatherings over 25 people, except for weddings, funerals, political events, or if you’re one of the roughly 2 million New Jerseyans who go to or work in a school.
Pardon me while I run these inputs into my trusty Commodore 64 over here and see what it spits out …
DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE
I just don’t understand. Indoor gatherings over 25 are banned unless … unless you’re getting married during a political protest in church while learning reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic?
I mean, come on Phil. This makes zero sense.
And now — right now, probably more than ever in the ... how long has this pandemic been going on now, like 50 years? (seriously: Think back to this past New Year’s Eve: It’s 50 years ago, right?) — Murphy needs to make sense. He can’t afford to lose people like me, people who have been ringing the alarm bells since day one, people who have been bunkered up, people who are freaked the hell out about this disease. You lose people like me with these clearly arbitrary rules and …
And then there’s no telling how we’re going to react.
In the worst days of the pandemic in New Jersey, Murphy’s popularity rose with his restrictions. We were in uncharted territory, we were looking for a leader to guide us. Murphy — whether you agreed with him or not — was that leader.
But now, we’re not following so blindly. Now, it’s not just the honest skeptics and the “knuckleheads” and the Gates/Soros wackadoos that are looking askance at some of these rules and regulations — it’s kind of spread to all of us.
So when Murphy limits indoor gatherings to 25 people, and makes a big show of it, but then in the same breath allows big gatherings if you’re getting married, or going to a religious ceremony, or going to freaking school … well, it’s fair for us to throw our hands up and be like, “What the hell, Phil?”
We are — sadly — once again at a tipping point here in New Jersey. The rate of infection is increasing, testing is lagging behind by weeks, and a sense of complacency has taken over. We are in a danger zone. I am legitimately worried that we’re going to be back to April numbers come this time next month. And this nonsensical half-measure of banning indoor gatherings of more than 25 people — except, except, and except — is going to accomplish nothing.
It’s time for Murphy to either shut everything down again in hopes of wiping out our second wave before it smacks us, or, quite simply, don’t and let the chips fall — and coronavirus shed — where they may.
Jeff Edelstein is a columnist for The Trentonian. He can be reached at jedelstein@ trentonian.com, facebook. com/jeffreyedelstein and @ jeffedelstein on Twitter.