Patience, precautions will see us through
People have every right to worry about COVID-19. The novel coronavirus pandemic is causing the type of worldwide disruption not seen since the last world war. It is creating panic across the planet and in our communities here in Cape May and Atlantic counties.
But we cannot let fear overtake us and overreact toward our friends, family and neighbors.
We must take the precautions required under Gov. Phil Murphy’s executive order that is closing most businesses, blocking gatherings and requiring us not to leave our homes unnecessarily, at minimum, for the next few weeks, and possibly longer.
If we collectively heed the advice of the scientists who are trying to limit the spread of this deadly virus and who are advising our political leaders on the best course of action to accomplish this, we should come out of this sooner rather than later.
If we don’t, the chance of COVID-19 spreading throughout the state and nation will increase and the economic devastation on a micro and macro level will skyrocket. As it is, the immediate future is going to be a rough ride for many of us in the workforce because of greatly reduced hours, lost jobs, lost business. That doesn’t include the potential sickness and death toll that could accompany it.
As leading scientists say, better to be overcautious.
We should not, however, take our fears and turn them into anger at one another or – as we’ve seen too much of already – rage at the second-home owners, part-time residents and visitors. We have seen too much of that already. We have heard the claims how the people who don’t live here year-round are stripping our supermarket shelves, bringing the coronavirus to the area and endangering the local population.
That came out after Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton publicly asked the part-time residents and tourists to stay away to not overburden Cape May County at this precarious time. That has fired up a great back-and-forth, turning the mostly innocuous local vs. shoobie debate into something far more spiteful.
We have been to the local supermarkets and have seen some empty shelves, but we have also been impressed with how our local markets are doing a standup job refilling most of those shelves except for toilet paper, other paper products and hand sanitizers that are grabbed up as soon as they become available. We haven’t failed to notice the same thing is happening with those products in big cities and small towns across the country.
There are plenty of locals who did their own panic buying and hoarding.
We do notice a lot more out-of-state license plates for this time of year, which isn’t unusual given how much property is owned by people from out of state, but we still see vastly more empty parking spaces and empty homes and quiet downtowns and malls and boardwalks and promenades in places such as Cape May and Ocean City.
This isn’t like the summer tourist season has come early. The streets still resemble shore towns in March.
However – and it is a big however – it is fair to ask everyone, visitors and locals alike, to follow the strict guidelines set down not only by Gov. Murphy, but by Pennsylvania’s governor and New York’s governor. They are all asking for drastically reduced movement to curb the spread of COVID-19, a virus that has infected hundreds of thousands of people around the world and killed thousands.
The positive testing for CORVID-19 and related death toll in New Jersey was climbing. While south Jersey had far fewer cases than the rest of the state, New Jersey as a whole was outpacing neighboring Pennsylvania.
This is a stressful time, but it will be less so if we all do our best to act with as much good will toward others as possible.
In the meantime, we urge all of our readers to do their best to patronize the local businesses that are open. This is a time when they need all the support they can get. We want them to survive this crisis, just as we’d like every person to survive.