When Miami-Dade reopens, demand to know who’s keeping you safe — and who’s not | Editorial
As the coronavirus lingers menacingly in South Florida, the end of the lockdown forces us to put a more-sober spin on Ronald Reagan’s admonition: “Trust, but verify.”
As long-homebound residents of Miami-Dade County stand ready to be unleashed as of 12:01 a.m. Monday, the Editorial Board can only caution everyone to trust absolutely no one — and verify that the businesses, offices, restaurants and stores they plan to enter are following the meticulous rules that County Mayor Carlos Gimenez released on Friday.
How is your workplace going to keep you protected? If they haven’t said, demand that they do. How are your doctor’s office, your dry cleaners, your corner diner, your you-name-it enforcing safety measures? Call first and make sure that they are complying with the county’s exhaustive 176-page “New Normal” guidelines for reopening.
Must wear masks
Gimenez’s order mandates that business employees and visitors must wear face coverings; any business where just one employee or on-site contractor tests positive for COVID-19 must close for as long as it takes to deep-clean the business and test all employees; otherwise, the business must remain closed for 14 days.
Our advice is cynical, but justifiably so. For long too long, the coronavirus pandemic has been one long trust exercise, one in which just about everyone Floridians looked to for guidance and leadership failed to have our backs. We can’t trust the state’s COVID-19 death toll because Gov. DeSantis has muzzled state medical examiners. We can’t trust the results of an antibody test used on thousands of South Florida residents. (Even the vice president of the test’s manufacturer, Banyan Medical Systems, said that while the tests are not always accurate, he stands by them. Glad he’s pleased.) We couldn’t trust elected officials who wasted time playing doctor as they pushed some untested “cure” on us. We couldn’t even trust strangers to be responsible enough to wear masks and stay the hell away from us when local parks reopened.
And, in our opinion, we still can’t trust much of anyone.
Report violators
Rather, residents, workers and businesses bear an even greater responsibility to protect themselves and others around them now that lockdown has ended. Any failure to follow and enforce the county’s well-vetted guidelines means an increase in coronavirus cases, exactly the wrong direction in which to go. For those who will not wade through the “New Normal” guidelines, Gimenez should make clear publicly that violations will be penalized; that compliance will be monitored; that workers — and anyone else — can report businesses in non-compliance. And any idiot who refuses to wear a mask should be clapped in handcuffs. We all have a responsibility to be the eyes and ears that will keep the community safe.
To be clear, COVID-19 has not gone away. In some states, such as Tennessee ,there has been a spike in confirmed cases since the state reopened. In other states, the number of cases is holding steady. In Florida, ever more testing — and stepped-up contact tracing — are absolutely key to getting a true picture of the status of the coronavirus now major segments of business activity will go online statewide once Miami-Dade and Broward reopen. But both testing and contact tracing are lagging in Florida, dangerously so.
Starting Monday, real life in Miami-Dade County will edge back. But, trust us, it won’t be back to anything close to normal.
Editor’s note: This editorial has been modified from the print version to remove a disputed claim about the number of coronavirus cases in Palm Beach County.
This story was originally published May 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM.