Patch Article Supports Gym, Puts Our Community At Risk

The Patch article, "Hillsborough Gym Fights For Freedom, Cited For Reopening," (https://patch.com/new-jersey/h...) posted on May 20th, presents and seems to support several dangerous ideas that could have dangerous implications for our community.

Firstly, I do not blame fitness business owner Kyle Newell for wanting and needing to provide for his family. I have a small child of my own and understand completely that concern. I am also an avid gym-goer myself and miss the stress relief of weight training beyond explanation. I agree with him that we do need hope and are all clamoring for some sense of a return to normalcy. But while the article presents his perspective, it fails to provide the reader any information to the contrary which would allow one to make up one's own mind.

The reasons for the shut down of businesses such as Mr. Newell's are simple. The disease is transmitted via respiration. The vast majority of people who can transmit COVID-19 do not show symptoms, and those that do get sick are contagious during the up-to-two week incubation period before the actual illness begins. Per a Business Insider article from March (https://www.businessinsider.co...), just one person can be the initial infection point for 59,000 people.

It is impossible for fitness businesses like Mr. Newell's to effectively police disease transmission, where people are actively breathing harder and faster and are potentially spreading more viral particulate into the air around them. It would only take one person with no idea he/she is infected to turn a business like Newell Strength into a flashpoint for a massive outbreak right here in our own community. Until we have universal testing and contact tracing, it is simply not safe for businesses such as these to open.

Moreover, the article fails to report on, or even ask, several key questions:

Mr. Newell is justifiably worried about the business he built, as are all other small business owners in our area. Has he applied for the SBA stimulus and support passed by the federal government with the purpose of ensuring small business survival during this necessary shut down? What was his experience like? How much of those $4 trillion have actually made it down to our local businesses?

The article also seems to define very narrowly and celebrate the idea of "freedom" as an ability to do whatever one wants, whenever one wants, without any consideration for others, even in direct violation of a lawful order during a state of emergency.

Are we to assume that this is Patch's position? That the world revolves around the individual? My child would be very happy to hear that. What about the freedom of someone about to be put on a ventilator whose family members are forced to sit at home and wait for news? What about the freedom of our truly essential workers who have been literally putting their own lives and livelihoods in harms way for the betterment of the rest of us? I'd hate to think that our gratitude towards them stops at social media "thank yous" and yard signs.

Above all, it is Patch's job to both ask and answer these questions, and I respectfully ask that a better job is done at asking them. We must keep in mind that this is still a pandemic and a situation the likes of which no one alive today has ever witnessed. We will get through this together, but we all must continue to do our part.