Last year everything was shut down and people were ordered to stay at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In 2021 the government restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are a lot harder to understand.
For instance, the Greensboro City Council had begun holding meetings in the Council Chamber in April and in July invited people to attend the meetings and speak to the City Council in person.
The Council Chamber was largely empty for those meetings and people who wanted to speak but didn’t want to risk sitting in a large room with a few other people were allowed to speak virtually. Councilmembers could also participate in the meetings virtually but did so only where they could not be there in person, just like before COVID-19.
In August the City Council because of the resurgence of COVID-19 went back to meeting virtually.
The determination was made that it was too dangerous for the members of the City Council, city staff and a few members of the public to gather in the Council Chamber.
However, the same City Council has determined that it is safe for over 3,000 people to attend a musical event at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, Sept. 2.
And to attend events at the Greensboro Coliseum, which has a capacity of over 20,000.
It is also safe for people to go to movies, bars, restaurants, theaters and public events.
There are no social distancing requirements for events at The Tanger, the Greensboro Coliseum, or bars, restaurants and theaters. People are required to wear masks because of a mandate from the Guilford County Board of Commissioners.
People can go to indoor events for entertainment all over Greensboro as long as they wear masks, but not to City Council meetings. The City Council can attend a retirement party for a city employee, but not a City Council meeting.
What kind of weird disease is this COVID-19 that is deemed too contagious for the City Council to hold any public meetings but is not so contagious that it is safe for thousands of people to gather in The Tanger Center or the Greensboro Coliseum for entertainment.
You might surmise that the City Council is using COVID-19 as an excuse to keep people from attending City Council meetings, just like the City Council used COVID-19 as an excuse to prohibit the public from speaking at the monthly City Council public forums from April through September of 2020.
Just like the Guilford county clowns, the City Council are a bunch of rag tag people who think they are elites. They’re a disgrace to Greensboro for sure.
I think you are right about the
city council using Covid as an excuse. I also think Skip Alston is using the mask mandate to ruin all Guilford County businesses! IF all businesses would stand up to this tyranny, I believe the council would rescind this ridiculous mask mandate!
The reason that we cannot have city Council meetings is to prevent the public from knowing how stupid they are!
Another indication of the hostile city takeover by DEMOCRATICS
You left out schools
Well that is a valid point. Obviously no one is thinking about the children. Their safety should be our number one priority
Well for some reason it is hard for me to post my views about schools. My concern is we should think about how they are in school and cannot social distance because of class sizes
Bingo!
No surprise here. Greensboro City Council members seem fearful and unabashedly scornful of their constituency.
You are so right John….I agree with you completely.
They just want us all to be good little nazis:
https://youtu.be/Do03sya2v1g
It’s so funny that John can write about a need to close everything but disguise it as a conspiracy theory that the so intelligent readers completely buy into. We’ve known for a while now the The Rhino is more fiction than fact!
Good points though, City and County should probably close restaurants, theaters, retail, entertainment, schools, etc. to keep us all safe.
John, you need to get the news media to come to your office and tell them what you said in this opinion piece. Have them broadcast it at the 5:00 & 6:00 news, and also get the national news media to do a piece on it. This council run by “do-gooders” is an example of power gone mad. But they do have time to issue proclamations on discrimination of people because of their hair style.
Remember, we are all peons compared to the council. . . .and they probably have reserved seats at the Tanger center as well.
It’s a bit misleading here, John. But you know that.
The show at Tanger Center requires all guests to be vaccinated AND will require attendees to wear masks.
Same goes for the Coliseum – all currently require masks some shows will also require vaccines.
By having virtual meetings, it actually opens the possibility for more to participate. The City Council can’t reasonably require a vaccination to enter a public building, so it’s necessary to come up with different solutions that allow both vaccinated citizens and idiots to participate. You’ve been denying the seriousness of this pandemic over the last 20ish months, so it isn’t surprising that you also expect everyone to just accept that over 640,000 US citizens have died, over 14,500 North Carolinians have died, and over 750 in Guilford County have died. MANY of those were preventable, and you refuse to acknowledge that.
You are slime.
Peter, you and your ilk are the self-congratulating clueless ones who don’t even admit the stupidity of sorting events (or employability) by vaccination status. Pure discrimination:
1. Black/Hispanic people have the lowest vaccination rates compared to White/Asian.
2. Natural covid immunity is longer lasting and stronger against variants i.e. Delta than the vaccine immunity (see Israel etc)
3. People have legitimate health and religious reasons to withhold vaccination
And yet you have the gall to say anyone who is unvaccinated is an idiot. You are part of the problem.
This should be a conversation between reasonable people in our society, in which Hammer is playing his part by asking fair questions albeit from his own personal perspective (it’s an Opinion column genius), and here you are totally stuck in your echo chamber.
Also, follow the $$$
LOL..it is what Demorats do!!
What “fair question” did John ask? There isn’t a question mark in his entire rambling.
You might suggest the rhetorical statement “What kind of weird disease is this COVID-19 that is deemed too contagious for the City Council to hold any public meetings but is not so contagious that it is safe for thousands of people to gather in The Tanger Center or the Greensboro Coliseum for entertainment.” as the question John asked. And if you read my reply, you’ll see I’m pointing to the very clear distinction between citizens being able to participate in government, and the required vaccinations and masks to attend an entertainment event.
People not getting vaccinated may not be idiots. The better term would be a*holes. Less than 1% of the population have legitimate medical reasons to not get the vaccine. Religious exemptions are just flexing your “rights” because you can. The Bible doesn’t ban vaccines, nor does the Torah or Koran. There’s not religious text that supports putting your neighbors at a health risk. You’re avoiding the vaccine because you don’t care about others, are irrationally scared, or some combination.
John is stirring his base. As he always does. Not a journalist. Has no ethics.
Less than 1% have medical reasons? Hogwash. If you have immunity from already contracting Covid, than the short term side effect profile alone should contraindicate your need for the jab (heart inflammation, DEATH…geez). Let alone the unknown long term effect on reproductivity and the immune system.
Religious texts combined with the facts of how the vaccine was developed can EASILY preclude use of the vaccine for religious reasons, in a simple syllogistic format. I admit that some less informed or less fervant practitioners may use the exemption as a copout, but to lump everyone under that category is discriminatory and unethical.
Furthermore, all this talk about not caring for others and putting your neighbors at risk shows that you have fallen for the scaremongering tactics that were used to push the vaccines. Of course we care for our neighbors. And I support and advocate vaccines for the vulnerable. But my vaccination or lack thereof shouldn’t matter to you, if the vaccine was actually “safe and effective”.
To quote Berenson, who was removed from Twitter for this reflective truth bomb:
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity,”
Follow the $$$
The Council did not allow public comments at their previous virtual meetings for almost a year. There will be fewer participating because they have made the rules difficult for people to sign up to speak. They are free to have virtual meetings but they need to have a way for the public to efficiently comment without as many barriers either in writing or via video.
Well “Doctor” Venkman, if you want to talk about preventable morbidity, let’s get smoking banned altogether as well as junk food. Let’s make obesity, one of the largest contributors to death, a crime. Punish those who choose to be obese and choose to smoke just as you would punish those who do not vaccinate. Both cause death to the offender and second hand smoke is a proven killer. Additionally, such bad habits have also been proven to be “transmitted” from parent to child. So, sure, the transmission rate isn’t at the same speed as your virus, but it still exists. So by your argument, we better get on the mandate ball and mandate no smoking, mandate no junk food, mandate no overeating, heck we better ban alcohol again while we’re at it. Besides being another unhealthy habit that has been proven to lead to death through organ failure, cancer, and other means, alcohol misuse behind the wheel, AKA drunk drivers, kill and injure thousands of people per year, not to mention all the thousands of dollars of damage. So mandate alcohol away. Mandate everything that is bad for anyone away, because preventing death is the goal here right? In the end, you will have mandated your very freedom away “for the good of the people.”
Now you’re talking. Take public health more seriously.
Q U A C K
I guess we’ve gone from phrases like: “Give me liberty or give me death!” and “They may take my life, but they will never take my freedom!” to “Please take my freedom, so I don’t have to risk my life.”
Sad, sad days.
I miss Under The Hammer. What an unfortunate time not to have that to read every week. Where did it go??
Thanks for a snippet.
I’m so glad that the hypocrisy of our city administration is being brought to light. They will sacrifice anything, including our liberties, to promote events that support a select demographic, All the while denying the citizens access to a distant and secretive administration hiding behind COVID concerns.
If we are in so much danger from the pandemic, why would they actively promote two potentially dangerous super-spreader events?
Isn’t the Tanger Center and the Folk Festival a perfect venue for the transmission of this disease? Aren’t we all in imminent danger?
Or, is the loss of prestige the only real danger that exists.