By Eric W. Schoen
I walked into TJ Maxx at Ridge Hill on Monday to return something that I had purchased that did not fit. It was a time of day and a day of the week that the store was not busy, so I didn’t have to wait on line that long.
I noticed that before the number flashed on the screening telling me which cashier to go to, Cashier number 8 had just finished cleaning off her counter where customers would place goods for purchase or return with an antiseptic wipe.She did the same for the keypad customers would use to approve their charge or enter in their PIN number for the purchase if they were using a debit card.
I had just heard that Governor Cuomo was lifting the mask ban in New York State. However, those who had not yet been vaccinated were still required to wear their masks indoors when they were shopping. Enforcement of the mask policy was going to be left up to the stores themselves, and that there was no specific protocol in place requiring verification of vaccination by the customer, nor any requirement that the the customer even be asked if he or she had the Covid vaccination and 2 weeks had gone by to allow the vaccine to hit full effectiveness.
But the government was encouraging stores to check the vaccine status of their customers. And who do think was going to be charged with doing this? Not Tim Cook from Apple at their stores but the staff in the store. So this poor cashier who because she was working in Yonkers and not working a couple a blocks away in the Bronx would be earning $13.50 an hour in Yonkers vs. $15 in the Bronx, serving as the cleaning woman scrubbing the sales counter before and after each transaction could now be getting the title of ‘Vaccine Enforcement Police’ not requiring documentation of vaccination but just accepting the customers words coming from his or her mouth?
And you wonder why so many retailers have ‘Help Wanted’ signs in their windows. And if he or she was selected to check vaccine status, chances are they would be charged with at the same time sanitizing the shopping carts. All the while only being protected with a mask and maybe flimsy plastic gloves. Not worth it if you can sit home and collect unemployment from the previous job you had.
Don’t get me wrong. No one dislikes masks and not being able to see people’s smiling faces more then me. I was wearing the blue hospital masks until I got so fed up with their color reminding me as if I was in a hospital that I went out and bought a box of black masks. The masks affected me when I went to the movie theater for the first time since the pandemic and by sort of blocking clear breathing encouraged my body to doze off during critical parts of the movie.
You are allowed to take off your masks when you are eating or drinking at the movie theater. So now I always keep a bottle of water with me at theater to give the impression that I am drinking so it is permissible to keep my mask off. Heck, I’m usually one of 5 or 6 people in the theater!
I knew things were changing in the ‘Mask up, Super Cautious’ Covid 19 world when I got a call last week from a doctor I see that required patients to call on the phone when you arrived to make sure there were no other patients in the office. The doctor’s assistant said I didn’t have to call to be sure the coast was clear. Another sign of change was when Panera put the sweetener packets and the varieties of milk for your coffee on the counter for you to put in yourself versus having the barista put it in for you. I never understood the coffee rule but their are a lot of rules I don’t understand that we are called upon to follow today.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) based its decision to announce that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors or outdoors on two studies that indicated that individuals who have been vaccinated with either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines are at an extremely low risk of contracting COVID-19. The rate of transmitting the virus to others, should they become infected, is also very low.
The CDC and Biden administration announcements regarding masks and social distancing were totally unexpected and gave retailers, restaurants and other places of business little time to change course. Basically it puts the onus on businesses to enforce the rules which still require the unvaccinated to mask up and distance themselves from the the vaccinated and set very little time to put systems in place.
Basically we are relying on an honor system for 50% of the population give or take a few percent who have not been vaccinated. Is that a chance our country should be taking? I know the conservatives out there are in heaven and loving Biden and the CDC as they gave them the OK to ditch the masks. Should we require some documentation before you are allowed to do this? What happened to the animalistic phrase ‘herd immunity.’
So a baseball or football stadium requires you to show proof you have been vaccinated or don’t have the virus but a clothing store or the local Walmart let’s you in either unmasked or masked by your word of mouth. Or they might not even question you at all.
How do you as a vaccinated person feel about this? How does an unvaccinated person with a mask feel being in close proximity with people who claim they are vaccinated and are not vaccinated nor wearing a mask. Do you think we can rely on the 50% of Americans who are not vaccinated to follow the honor system? We are, as we should be sending millions of vaccine does abroad to help countries like India that are in desperate need. We can do this as we have a little less than 50% of the population who are unvaccinated.
When someone tells me they haven’t been vaccinated, don’t have the time to get vaccinated or are afraid, I tell them to put the television on and watch the daily reports on the tragedy going on in India. We are fortunate in this country to have plenty of vaccine so roll up your sleeve and get the dam vaccine. If you have aches and pains or a bump on your arm, deal with. It usually goes away within 24 hours.
If we are not wearing masks open the fitting rooms and allow people to try clothes on once again in department stores. Open the bathrooms so people can wash their hands with soap and water like they were taught at 2 years of age. Adjust sinks in public bathrooms to give you 20 seconds to rinse your hands without pushing the button again.Paper towels are more sanitary than those high speed hair dryers.
Remember Masks are required on trains, buses, public schools, homeless shelters, , correctional facilities, health care settings, public transit hubs and airports. Let children get nose swabbed at school so we can pick up on any new strains of the coronavirus or catch an outbreak early on.
Public health officials and epidemiologists have also been calling this new guidance into question, considering the lack of direction provided by the CDC, the inability to adequately verify whether or not individuals have been vaccinated, vaccination rates across the country and state have yet to reach herd immunity levels and new variants are surfacing across the globe. Let’s show them we know what we are doing!
And thank the young lady at TJ MAXX making $13.50 an hour putting her life at risk so you can shop and enjoy your summer! Halloween is over til October 31 and let’s hope we can safely unmask!
Reach Eric Schoen at thistooisyonkers@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @ericyonkers. Listen to Eric Schoen and Dan Murphy on the Westchester Rising Radio Show Thursday’s from 10-11 a.m. On WVOX 1460 AM, go to WVOX.com and click the arrow to listen to the live stream or download the WVOX app from the App Store free of charge.
