Community Chat

[golding76]

Delaware beach bars to close again Friday; Phase Two to continue indefinitely

Beach bars in Delaware will close Friday, ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, after an uptick in several COVID-19 metrics, Gov. John Carney announced.

“We have a little bit of a fire that’s been starting in our beach communities and we need to put it out,’’ Delaware’s governor said at a news conference Tuesday.

Carney also put off indefinitely the state’s planned move into Phase Three of the lifting of safety restrictions.

“We’re in better shape” than states such as Texas and Florida, where cases are getting out of control, Carney said, but though the 14-day trend for hospitalizations looks good, the number of new cases and the percentage of tests that come back positive are “gradually moving upward.”

The governor said that the largest recent increase in beach areas comes among people ages 17 to 18, followed by those between 18 and 30.

He placed some of the responsibility on “the complacency that we see,” especially among younger people, about following guidelines regarding social distancing and masks.

Carney said the state will stay in Phase Two “until we get a better handle on where this surge is coming from, and we ****** it in the bud.”

Three lifeguards in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, the town announced.

Delaware’s health officer, Dr. Karyl Rattay, said that there have been clusters of cases among lifeguards and restaurant workers near the beaches, as well as full-time residents of those communities.

At a recent testing event in Rehoboth Beach, 9.5% of more than 1,000 people tested came back positive, and while the age range was 17 to 72, the average age was 29.5, she said.

At a recent small testing event of 92 restaurant workers in Dewey Beach, 14.8% came back positive, she added. Most were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, which is good news for them but not necessarily the people they come into contact with.

The news comes on the same day that health officials in Loudoun County, Virginia, have identified a group trip to Myrtle Beach as one of the main factors in an outbreak among young people in that county.

Carney said the outbreak in beach communities was “not quite as serious yet” as that among poultry plants in the state, but that young people in beach communities live, work and hang out together, which facilitates the spread of COVID-19.

“Wear a face mask … mostly out of respect for others,” Carney said. “Too many people have sacrificed too much for us to have another uptick.”

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[suzyQ3]

Proactive is smart.

[golding76]

Several times I had read that if we open too soon, there might be closings once again.  Now I am wondering if it is going to be like this until we have a vaccine to protect us.

This is a bit much, I admit.  An invisible enemy is the worst. 

[QueenDanceALot]

I wonder if it's too little, too late.

Since April 1, stricken European countries have seen a steady and steep decline and have been opening their businesses with success as we have been seeing a gradual and now steep incline.

We need some serious public health response across the board, not piecemeal.

[Greeneyedlady21]

@QueenDanceALot Yes, piecemeal clearly doesn't work. Dr. Fauci said today that he fears it could get up to 100,000 cases a day.

[tansy]

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@QueenDanceALot wrote:

I wonder if it's too little, too late.

Since April 1, stricken European countries have seen a steady and steep decline and have been opening their businesses with success as we have been seeing a gradual and now steep incline.

We need some serious public health response across the board, not piecemeal.

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Just an incredible mess.  Another phrase comes to mind but I can't use it here:/

[QueenDanceALot]

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@Greeneyedlady21 wrote:

@QueenDanceALot Yes, piecemeal clearly doesn't work. Dr. Fauci said today that he fears it could get up to 100,000 cases a day.

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I heard that @Greeneyedlady21 .

Clearly, we are headed in the wrong direction.  And very quickly.

[tansy]

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@golding76 wrote:

Several times I had read that if we open too soon, there might be closings once again.  Now I am wondering if it is going to be like this until we have a vaccine to protect us.

This is a bit much, I admit.  An invisible enemy is the worst. 

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I'm not holding my breath for a vaccine anytime soon.  

[Sheila P-Burg]

I wish Ohio would start doing something. The count keeps going up and up. Not exactly sure of the reason considering in my area it is our hospital employees, day care workers and now there are state employees.

[Mz iMac]

N.J. Gov Murphy has now changed his mind regarding indoor dining.  It's now cancelled until further notice becaue of "Knuckleheads."  Then this afternoon, he added.........

No smoking, drinking or eating as Atlantic City casinos open

In this June 24, 2020 photo, Dean Loveland, a worker at the Hard Rock casino in Atlantic City N.J., installs plexiglass barriers between player positions at a card table at the casino a week before it was to reopen amid the coronavirus outbreak. Smoking, drinking and eating will all be prohibited when Atlantic City's casinos reopen after being shut for three months due to the coronavirus outbreak under rules imposed by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on June 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Atlantic City tried Prohibition once before. It worked so well that Nucky Johnson, the legendary politician and racketeer, built a Boardwalk empire immortalized on HBO nearly a century later.

It also tried banning smoking, too. That lasted for 20 days as smokers stayed away, sending casino revenue plummeting.

But New Jersey will ban both, again, when Atlantic City’s nine casinos reopen after more than three months of coronavirus-related shutdowns.

The late-night announcements from Gov. Phil Murphy landed like a one-two punch on Atlantic City’s casino industry, already reeling from lost revenue during the pandemic, and making plans to creak back to life at the state-mandated 25% of normal capacity.

“No booze? No one’s coming,” said Bob McDevitt, president of a casino employees union. “I really don’t even think they should open. Why would they?”

Many casinos had planned to reopen Thursday, the first day the state will let them. But that was before they knew they could not let their customers smoke, drink alcohol or anything else, or eat inside the casinos.

The top-performing casino, the Borgata, almost immediately folded what it saw as a losing hand, announcing it was scrapping its reopening plans for the immediate future. Instead, it will wait until conditions are more favorable.

On Tuesday, casino executives huddled in staff meetings, looking for more information and trying to decide whether it made sense to reopen at all.

By mid-afternoon, all except the Borgata announced plans to reopen in the coming days. Resorts, Tropicana, Ocean, Golden Nugget and Hard Rock all said they will reopen Thursday. Harrah’s, Caesars and Bally’s will reopen Friday.

Borgata had no estimate of when it might reopen.

Jim Allen, president of Hard Rock International, said the company and its thousands of workers are eager to reopen and start making up for some of the losses they have experienced since March.

“People are really desperate for a job and a paycheck,” he said.

Murphy said Tuesday casinos will just have to endure a new reality until conditions improve.

“It’s not a life sentence,” he said. “We would like to be full-bore open; we’re just not there yet.”

Before the pandemic, Atlantic City had started to regain its groove, reclaiming its former spot at the nation’s No. 2 gambling market behind Nevada in terms of annual gambling revenue.

Nevada casinos reopened nearly a month earlier than those in New Jersey, with many of the same health protocols: temperatures checks for guests and workers, mandated masks after being optional for a time, and hand sanitizer stations. Smoking was still allowed.

Within minutes of Murphy’s announcements, made in a news release issued shortly before 10 p.m. Monday, social media lit up with complaints.

Some grumbled that the governor had sucked the fun out of the casino experience, even as a smaller number defended the decision on public health grounds. Some said they were scrapping long-planned trips, and others said they would take their business to Pennsylvania casinos.

Some vowed to come anyway, mixing drinks in their rooms and bringing sandwiches for dinner.

The bans will also reduce the number of laid-off workers who will return. Drink servers and indoor restaurant workers were to comprise a significant portion of the force that had been envisioned.

McDevitt said 60% of his union members had been scheduled to return to work this week. Now, as few as 30% may go back.

Casinos can offer outdoor dining, and those with beach bars, outdoor decks or Boardwalk seating still plan to offer it. And alcohol will still be sold in liquor stores and non-casino businesses. But the last thing casinos want is their patrons leaving the premises, for any reason.

Murphy said he reversed course on indoor dining because of the continuing outbreaks in parts of the country, even though New Jersey has seen a significant reduction in the number of its virus cases.

A significant portion of Atlantic City’s casino customers comes from New York, which leads the nation in total virus cases. Murphy also said crowds at popular spots at the Jersey Shore and elsewhere have not been following social distancing rules or wearing masks.

That angered many in the casino industry.

“This is like Catholic school: A handful of people misbehaves, and the entire class gets punished,” McDevitt said.

SOURCE: apnews.com/c18e3903dfdc77d47484745dc484b94e