Goose-Stepping Mayor

From Reuters:

“New York City to enforce traveler quarantine with COVID-19 checkpoints”

New York City will put up COVID-19 quarantine checkpoints at key entry points to ensure that incoming travelers from 35 states with outbreaks comply with the state’s 14-day quarantine mandate, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday. The measure underscores the determination in what was once the pandemic’s epicenter to prevent a resurgence of cases being seen elsewhere. While cases are down 5% nationally, they soared last week in Oklahoma, Montana, Missouri and 17 other states. On average, 1,000 people are dying each day nationwide from COVID-19. The U.S. death toll is now over 157,000 with 4.8 million known cases. “Travelers coming in from those states will be given information about the quarantine and will be reminded that it is required, not optional,” de Blasio told a news briefing. He added that, under certain circumstances, fines for not observing the quarantine order could be as high as $10,000. The Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with other law enforcement agencies, will begin deploying checkpoints at major bridge and tunnel crossings into New York City on Wednesday. “This is serious stuff and it’s time for everyone to realize that if we’re going to hold at this level of health and safety in this city, and get better, we have to deal with the fact that the quarantine must be applied consistently to anyone who’s traveled,” de Blasio said. A fifth of all new cases in New York City are from out-of-state travelers, said Dr. Ted Long, who oversees the city’s contact tracing program. Teams will be deployed at Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday, he said, to ensure travelers stop to complete a travel form. “We’re going to offer you things like free food delivery, help with medications, direct connections to doctors by the phone, or even a hotel stay,” Long added. The city, which once had over 800 coronavirus-related deaths in a single day, has reported no COVID-19 fatalities for the past three days. The mayor said the city’s infection rate had been under 3% for the past eight weeks. In March, Rhode Island briefly stopped cars with New York license plates, drawing a rebuke from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Beginning in mid-July, Cuomo deployed enforcement teams to the state’s airports to ensure travelers arriving from areas with major outbreaks provided contact information or risk a $2,000 fine.

^ this seems sketchy to me. If these checkpoints are only to educate people about quarantining then that’s ok, but I think the checkpoints will be more of a way for the NYC officials to forcibly quarantine people and that isn’t right. De Blasio and Cuomo have done a horrible job dealing with Covid-19 so far and this is just one more step in the wrong direction they have been following. Cuomo went crazy and threatened to sue when Rhode Island started doing what New York City is now planning to do. I said this back when RI wanted to do this and I'll say it now for NY: it starts with these checkpoints and ends with Cuomo and De Blasio goose-stepping down Times Square. ^

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/new-york-city-to-enforce-traveler-quarantine-with-covid-19-checkpoints-idUSKCN251281