Barbara Nevins Taylor

We left our relatively safe Zip Code in Manhattan yesterday to visit my mom’s grave for her birthday and her Yarzheit.  The cemetery is about fifteen minutes from the beach and we heard the ocean calling to us. 

If you haven’t been there, the causeway across the Great South Bay to Robert Moses State Park is worth the ride and it leads to a beautiful beach.  Nick grew up on Estero Island, or Fort Myers Beach, Florida and as a kid I went to the beach at Far Rockaway in Queens almost every summer day.  We love the beach.

We don’t want to bake in the sun any more. But we do want to put our feet in the surf and feel the rush of pleasure when your toes sink into the sand and the surf laps against your ankles.

Sure we felt a little crazy because we wore masks and gloves, just in case. On the beach people, for the most part,  did spread out and social distance. 

But there were enough people who didn’t wear masks to make us want to head away from them.

COVID-19 cases had been going down on Long Island. But we found out later that on July 13, the day we went to the beach, 102 people in Suffolk County tested positive for the virus. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a news release, said, “It’s also clear based on contact tracing that many of the new cases in New York are a result of a lack of compliance during the July 4 weekend and illustrate how quickly the virus spreads, with one party, for example, infecting more than a third of attendees,” Cuomo continued. “I cannot be more clear: Look at what’s happening in the rest of the country — if we are not smart, if we don’t wear masks and socially distance, cases will spike. No one wants to go back to the hell we experienced three months ago, so please stay vigilant.”

The party Cuomo referred to was in Suffolk County.  State and local contact tracing found that 35 percent of people who attended the Fourth of July party  became infected with COVID-19. 

Back in our Zip Code, we still feel safe despite people flocking to bars and drawing more complaints for COVID-19 non-compliance than anywhere in Manhattan.  We’ll continue to watch the numbers and see where and when it’s safe to go the beach again.