Framingham's in the red zone now, Make face masks mandatory now.
Yesterday BOH Director Sam Wong was quoted in the MWDN to say, "Pandemic is still with us".
Since we had a testing site at Keefe Tech and another walk-in center at Amazing Things, many more people have been tested and found to test positive.
Today, we are now in the red zone. While everything is based on the percentage of people per 1000 who test positive, what makes this different from the past few months is the age of the people testing positive. "People in there 20's and 30's are getting infected", Wong was quoted in the paper as saying.
When the pandemic hit, it was mostly older people in nursing homes and other long term health care facilities who had gotten very sick and many died. There was not enough PPE for workers and patients and some workers helped spread it. But that seems to be behind us.
But it's clear to many, including Sam Wong, younger people are ignoring the obvious dangers that crowds and not wearing face masks and the lack of social distancing are now causing Framingham to be in the red zone.
Sam is quoted in the paper today to say, "residents should now wear a mask in public at all times, despite the fact that mask-wearing is usually only advised when social distancing isn't possible. I want people to know that we should tale it one step further, Wear a face covering while your in public period. I don't think we need to make a mandatory policy for people to do that. People need to take the initiative. This is our community. We need to work together to make it right".
Well Sam, Mayor Spicer and City Council, it's been 170 days since the first case here in the Ham and I'll bet if you had made the mask mandate back then, perhaps some residents would not have died or gotten sick.
It's way past time to mandate face masks and social distancing, IMO.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 11:31 AM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
What is the reason we are seeing case counts rise here in Framingham? I think because we don't require and enforce the wearing of face masks. With a college here we probably have infected kids coming in and not wearing masks and infecting others if you ask me
the City is doing more testing for sure now that we are in the red zone. The new testing site is at Staples headquarters parking lot.
As I've read, the positive tests are from the south side where multi-generational households.
What seems to be making the problem worse is that contact tracing is not being done to everyone who has been tested positive.
Our neighbor who lives next door to us was notified he tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, August 19th. As of 5pm yesterday, he had not been contacted at all by anyone to ask for any information for who he had been in contact with. This may be part of the reason why we have a jump in numbers. If people don't know they may have been exposed to someone who tested positive, then they can't self quarantine.
This is shocking about no follow-up being done. Why is that so? Another failure of the Spicer administration.
WTF? If they are not doing a good job contact tracing then no wonder we are a red communiity. Another great job by our mayor
FSU opened on 9/2 with a bunch of kids from outside Framingham coming in so if we are not good at contact tracing we are going to see an even faster uptick in cases. I saw today the positive taste rate has gone up to over 3% which is horrific and if what you are saying is not fixed that is going to get much worse. So who do we reach out to about this lack of contract tracing issue to get it addressed?
Why isn't contact tracing being done better? Can not be anything more important than keeping the number of infections and deaths down. Are these nursing home numbers primarily or just regular people? No wonder schools are going remote.
This is shameful that such a critical piece of the equation to keep residents safe is a failure by our city. When are we going to actually start doing things the right way around here?
What do we do about this?
You raise an important issue but the problem is how do we address the issue? Suggestions Jim?
It seems we are not being given very accurate information by the city about these issues. Are they doing contract tracing? Have the positive number of cases gone up since FSU came back? I there one, or maybe more, hot spots in Framingham? Have we seen any super spreader events or individuals? Why are our numbers so much higher than 345 other communities (23 are 6th highest out of 351)? What type of additional funding is available to us because we are a red community? The mayor continues to talk about what we are doing, which seems to be the same things we have been doing all along that led to us becoming a red zone, so why are we not doing more, or something different?
I'm at a loss here. Sam Wong and the Mayor seem to be in denial. The State (DPH) seems to be not reporting back the positive tests results. And if that doesn't happen, how can we expect to lower our numbers.
The Mayor was guilted into a meeting last week (by the City Council) and another one this week with the DPH folks. Additional resources are needed, but all I've heard was that there's a covid response team that will come to Town to break up parties and provide more outreach to the south side. FSU could be like any other college if students are allowed to party hardy.
I truly believe that if the Mayor and Sam Wong mandated face masks everywhere in Town, we may have avoided the red zone designation.
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