Board of Aldermen 5-21-2020 Page 16
we have seen in New Hampshire most of the fatalities taking place in Assisted Living Facilities, that is
because those are facilities where individuals have no choice but to share air and a common HVAC
system, work with common denominators like staff and share food and all that kind of stuff. So they are by
far the most at risk but we have a large number of senior housing programs too.
When this was reviewed by the Board of Health, all three medical doctors on the Board unanimously
supported this. Their questions weren’t about whether or not this was a good move, it was whether this
would be adequate to fully protect us or not. There’s a lot of discussion about the changes that COVID-19
has taken. Being a recently discovered and a newly emerging disease, we had no idea even 3 months ago
that infants and toddlers would be showing Inflammation Syndromes where they could potentially lose
limbs and have life-long impairments. We didn’t know that younger people, who we thought were just
asymptomatic and not at risk, were starting to present a higher occurrence of heart, stroke and arrythmia
and risks like that.
We had been proceeding along the assumption that only a small percentage of elderly people would be
impact by this permanently, when the Public Health reality is that a huge number of people will be impacted
either directly or indirectly, either fatally or in a manner that impairs them. So there’s a tremendous amount
of risk in reopening in the phased manner that we are doing, particularly here in Nashua. As Alderman Lu
pointed out, as we start to have people eating outside and the weather turning nicer, you are going to see
people coming from right over the border, which is one of the hot spots in the country, coming to check out
what’s going on, coming to experience their own return to “normal” and that puts our business people at
risk. That puts our local residents at risk. We already know in Mine Falls and other outdoor recreational
facility, there’s a huge uptick in the number of Massachusetts plates that are coming over to use those
facilities. If we aren’t careful in Nashua, we are going to open ourselves up to unintended consequences.
When we start to phase the reopening up at the same pace as the rest of the State, then what is happening
north of Concord isn’t going to be the same as what’s happening in Nashua. We are going to see more
and more people coming and using these facilities. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle; we need to
make sure that businesses have a large enough population that they can serve to even pay for the
expenses of reopening. We need to guarantee their success and we also need to protect them and
assume our own role of governors of Nashua.
So | think it’s important that we consider this. | think this is a situation where we have a clear signal from
the Board of Public Health that this is something that’s important. Their opinion is qualified and in the
meeting the question was asked to enable this, “Does the Board of Alderman have to take action”. And to
enable this, and Attorney Bolton can correct me if | misspeak, both the Board of Public Health and the
Board of Alderman need to agree to enact it. Only one of those Boards needs to decide to remove it. So if
the Board of Public Health decides that the coast is clear, ICU capacity is at a safe space and we have
something approaching herd immunity or if miracle vaccine is — | mean I’m not going to put any faith in that,
but if it happened, then we would be able to take corrective action and there wouldn’t be a huge amount of
Legislative Process with which to do it.
So | think it’s important that we set this in place now in order to protect ourselves from the risk that we
cannot reverse course on. | think it’s important that we keep in mind that our businesses need us to do this.
They need us to protect their ability to do business and they need us to do our roles that we have been
elected to do.
President Wilshire
All set Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
Yes.
