Mayor Emphasizes Importance Of Masks
May 14, 2020 at 2:21 a.m.
Mayor Emphasizes Importance Of Masks
By David [email protected]
Starting out Wednesday morning’s weekly press briefing about COVID-19, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer emphasized the importance of people wearing masks especially while out at retail stores or wherever there’s public gatherings.
“As we’re phasing into this recovery, if you will, I want to kind of stress something I talked about last week. That was we’re very focused on Phase 2 and Phase 3, and the further we get out, Phase 4 and 5, the more tentative those plans are ... And while we do have a plan all the way through the governor’s five-phase recovery process, a lot of those plans, even locally, still remain tentative,” he said.
He then brought up the wearing of masks in public places.
Thallemer said, “The governor, in his Phase 2 and 3, suggests it is highly recommended for both customers and employees to wear face coverings. It is highly recommended for Phase 2 and 3, and it’s recommended through Phase 4, which takes us into July.”
The city continues to provide, in a somewhat limited supply, cloth masks at the Center Street fire station. They can be washed.
“We ask that those masks be worn in retail and public areas where public gatherings are occurring, public buildings, that type of thing when the public is involved,” Thallemer said.
He did a survey last week of the city’s large stores, and there was at least one box store that is requiring masks upon entering, he said.
“I’m very appreciative of that. I would like to see, at least by example, the rest of the stores maybe enact that policy,” Thallemer said. “I think it’s more important that the public understand how important it is for their health to wear a mask when they go out and shop.”
There is no mask police, and the city isn’t enforcing that, but the stores have taken it upon themselves to set rules in place, he said. “I think all the stores have done a great job of setting up their capacities, their hand-washing stations and the lines on the floor marking social distancing,” he said.
Thallemer noted he is somewhat disappointed in the lack of mask wearing in the stores by the general public. He “highly recommended” that those masks be worn in Phases 2 and 3 and “all the way” to July 4.
He thanked several groups who have been sewing “tirelessly” to provide masks to the public through the fire station. Those included Ann Sweet’s group, Liberty Sewing Circle, North Central Indiana Sewing Guild and the group of Tom and Susan Hyden and Joe and Darlene Shepherd.
“That is providing at least a central source of masks, which again I feel is still a very big part of the governor’s recovery plan as we move forward,” Thallemer said.
When Thallemer and Kosciusko County Public Health Officer Dr. William Remington were asked if they heard any concerns about some restaurant workers not wearing masks, Remington said he personally was not privy to the phone calls flowing through the health department’s central office with concerns about that. He met with Kosciusko County Health Department Administrator Bob Weaver Wednesday morning and “that was not a topic of immediate discussion.” Remington said they broadly discussed restaurants and restaurant workers and universal masking policies in general.
“I did not sense we had a flood of complaints one way or the other,” Remington said.
Thallemer said with restaurants just opening back up Monday, he hasn’t directly received any complaints about restaurant workers, but he did sense “there’s a pretty broad concern with just attending and going into public areas and retail and spaces where employees are required to wear masks and the public is not. And I’m getting a lot of concern that way that we all should be doing our part as we phase into this. We’re just in Phase 2.”
In this community, Thallemer said he feels like a majority of the people understand how important the masks are, but people get careless and then that sets the example.
“I just think it’s important that when people are in retail areas that it’s highly recommended that they do wear a mask,” he said.
Remington was later asked what would have to occur for the governor’s five-phase plan for the reopening of the state to stop or go back to previous phases.
“I would think it would spring from a crush at the door of the ER, urgent care setting, clinical settings in general,” he said. “You would take an as incisive approach to that as you could. You’d hunker down, trying to stay as close to where you feel that pebble has dropped into the pond and started a course of ripples and stay close to where that pebble dropped in the pond. That’s a basic public health communicable disease perspective.”
Remington said he didn’t know if you’d lay “broad ground fire again. I’m not sure what it would take to do that. This horizontal interdiction that we’ve been plagued with. I don’t know that we’ll see that come back in a big way, barring just a disasterous resurgence in the months ahead.”
Starting out Wednesday morning’s weekly press briefing about COVID-19, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer emphasized the importance of people wearing masks especially while out at retail stores or wherever there’s public gatherings.
“As we’re phasing into this recovery, if you will, I want to kind of stress something I talked about last week. That was we’re very focused on Phase 2 and Phase 3, and the further we get out, Phase 4 and 5, the more tentative those plans are ... And while we do have a plan all the way through the governor’s five-phase recovery process, a lot of those plans, even locally, still remain tentative,” he said.
He then brought up the wearing of masks in public places.
Thallemer said, “The governor, in his Phase 2 and 3, suggests it is highly recommended for both customers and employees to wear face coverings. It is highly recommended for Phase 2 and 3, and it’s recommended through Phase 4, which takes us into July.”
The city continues to provide, in a somewhat limited supply, cloth masks at the Center Street fire station. They can be washed.
“We ask that those masks be worn in retail and public areas where public gatherings are occurring, public buildings, that type of thing when the public is involved,” Thallemer said.
He did a survey last week of the city’s large stores, and there was at least one box store that is requiring masks upon entering, he said.
“I’m very appreciative of that. I would like to see, at least by example, the rest of the stores maybe enact that policy,” Thallemer said. “I think it’s more important that the public understand how important it is for their health to wear a mask when they go out and shop.”
There is no mask police, and the city isn’t enforcing that, but the stores have taken it upon themselves to set rules in place, he said. “I think all the stores have done a great job of setting up their capacities, their hand-washing stations and the lines on the floor marking social distancing,” he said.
Thallemer noted he is somewhat disappointed in the lack of mask wearing in the stores by the general public. He “highly recommended” that those masks be worn in Phases 2 and 3 and “all the way” to July 4.
He thanked several groups who have been sewing “tirelessly” to provide masks to the public through the fire station. Those included Ann Sweet’s group, Liberty Sewing Circle, North Central Indiana Sewing Guild and the group of Tom and Susan Hyden and Joe and Darlene Shepherd.
“That is providing at least a central source of masks, which again I feel is still a very big part of the governor’s recovery plan as we move forward,” Thallemer said.
When Thallemer and Kosciusko County Public Health Officer Dr. William Remington were asked if they heard any concerns about some restaurant workers not wearing masks, Remington said he personally was not privy to the phone calls flowing through the health department’s central office with concerns about that. He met with Kosciusko County Health Department Administrator Bob Weaver Wednesday morning and “that was not a topic of immediate discussion.” Remington said they broadly discussed restaurants and restaurant workers and universal masking policies in general.
“I did not sense we had a flood of complaints one way or the other,” Remington said.
Thallemer said with restaurants just opening back up Monday, he hasn’t directly received any complaints about restaurant workers, but he did sense “there’s a pretty broad concern with just attending and going into public areas and retail and spaces where employees are required to wear masks and the public is not. And I’m getting a lot of concern that way that we all should be doing our part as we phase into this. We’re just in Phase 2.”
In this community, Thallemer said he feels like a majority of the people understand how important the masks are, but people get careless and then that sets the example.
“I just think it’s important that when people are in retail areas that it’s highly recommended that they do wear a mask,” he said.
Remington was later asked what would have to occur for the governor’s five-phase plan for the reopening of the state to stop or go back to previous phases.
“I would think it would spring from a crush at the door of the ER, urgent care setting, clinical settings in general,” he said. “You would take an as incisive approach to that as you could. You’d hunker down, trying to stay as close to where you feel that pebble has dropped into the pond and started a course of ripples and stay close to where that pebble dropped in the pond. That’s a basic public health communicable disease perspective.”
Remington said he didn’t know if you’d lay “broad ground fire again. I’m not sure what it would take to do that. This horizontal interdiction that we’ve been plagued with. I don’t know that we’ll see that come back in a big way, barring just a disasterous resurgence in the months ahead.”
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