Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2021 Page 22
Alderwoman Lu
Okay, so I'll just go on to my other comment. | just don't understand why we wouldn't - So listening to the two sides, it
seems that some people feel like freedom is the right to go wherever they choose to go at any time and the people on
the other side say they have a right to be free of a mask anytime they want to be. | just don't see how we're going to
get a different response if we do this again kind of similarly to what we did in the past. | do feel that | don't understand
why we wouldn't change the protocols for dining in bars. | understand Dr. Storace you pointed out that people can
choose to go there or not but | don't think many people who we’re trying to convince feel that that's the difference or
that that that's relevant. I'm just concerned about whether we're going to do something that's effective. That's my
concern.
| had heard | been told that the rates went up 5% in the last, | don't know, three or four weeks. | just wondered if that's
correct and whether that's commensurate with the change, you know, the introduction of this. So I'm all set. Thank
you.
Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health
Thank you. I'm not sure of the question. | do know that Stephanie had texted me and you might want to defer the
question to Dr. Stephanie regarding a hospitalization. She made a comment that regarding ER doctors as the
patients and switching them to different hospitals and she's hospital based so it's right up her alley.
| think the question that you're asking me about the restaurants and bars if I'm not mistaken, enforcement is a really
tough thing and | understand that. | think we as individuals, and one of Alderpeople — I’m not sure what the proper
term is — | just don’t want to offend anybody - said basically, you know, you walk in there and you’re not wearing a
mask, you can walk away and that's your freedom of choice to do that. If you decide that you think it's a risk and you
sit down, there's no way other than testing a person four days hence whether caught COVID or not. But in the fact of
going out somewhere depends on the setting, it depends on the number of people that are congested in an area,
depends on the load of virus that you get that converts you to COVID. So we know people can get in areas where
there might be COVID but there is a load within a 24 hour period that if you get high enough, and everybody's a little
bit different. It isn't so many (inaudible) one person or for another. So what happens is you can get in that way as
well.
So when it comes to going out, it is an imperfect world because | have yet to figure out how to eat and drink with my
mask on. So | don't mean that to belittle anybody but just as like humor, we have to use common Sense to say look |
take my mask here and people are on top of me. If I'm in a bar eating with people on top of me, this may not be a
good choice. Did that answer your question because I’m not sure what the questions was? Sorry about that.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. It did answer my question. Yeah it seems a lot of people can’t understand my questions, but | just had a
follow up if | could please.
Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health
Sure.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. | understood better what | was trying to say to you but while you were talking. It seems like we’re — my
concern is that we're providing something so that our reasonable people who feel the way we do will be able to, |
guess, exercise their choices but what it doesn't seem to address what the problem is that we have is people who
won't wear a mask. People who are still going to be - it just seems that really all this is going to do is irritate a lot of
people but it's not going to incentivize masks and isn't that why we, you know, would come out here to vote for those.
That’s my concern, but thank you.
Tony Storace, Chairman, Board of Health
| understand your concerns that are absolutely valid. In my world, in a perfect world, everybody would wear a mask.
Everybody would be thin and now we’re in stripes to look thinner. But we know (inaudible) just like Mr. O'Brien was
saying and | know he follows my advice all the time, but it would be great if we just said you know what we're in a
crisis here. It's World War Il. Everybody's jumping on the boat and going to fight but that's not the case.
