The Town of Cape Charles has issued warnings for visitors to stay away. It has also implemented the following:
- The Cape Charles public beach will be closed, except for exercise and fishing
- Cape Charles’ Central Park will be closed, except for exercise
- The Cape Charles fishing pier will be closed
- All playgrounds and tennis courts will be closed
- All public restrooms will be closed
While the Mirror is completely against the current statewide shutdown, considers it way overkill given the data, Town Manager, also Emergency Manager John Hozey, and Mayor Dize did the correct thing by implementing these measures.
As was covered in this article, emergency response is an architecture with a set of protocols. Cape Charles is leveraging that architecture and implementing the prescribed protocol to protect its citizens. There really is no choice here.
Many years ago, when Joe Vacarro was Town Manager, I remember talking to him about emergency response. At the time, the town had none. We also noted that emergency response is fundamentally a local issue. That is, when things get real, Cape Charles is the point of the spear.
One of the first orders of business for Joe was to implement some form of framework based on the National protocols. At the time, we were more focused on natural disasters such as hurricanes. However, we were only a couple of years removed from 9/11, so an event like COVID-19, only due to some form of a terror attack, was also looked at.
Several years later, here we are. No one could have imagined something like this. The question becomes at what point do we decide to ease the protocols, and slowly get back to work?
The people advocating that we keep these shutdowns going for weeks or months longer simply aren’t grappling with or even acknowledging the human cost of the economic collapse that is certain to follow. They seem to be ignoring that aspect of the issue. And we should all be worried about that.
The crazy reaction to COVID-19 is to be expected. It’s hard to prepare for something you’ve never seen before. This is the most complex global crisis in modern history, and there’s simply too much motive for politicians and underlying media/support structures to game the situation. COVID-19 is gaming us.