Editorials

The fact that we as a community have to contend with far more people than we can comfortably carry on our shoulders was made amply clear last week when the East Hampton Town Board dispatched a panicked letter begging the state to shut the door on tourist stays.

Absent from the newly appointed Business Recovery Group, which convened by videoconference on April 29, was a single medical professional or anyone at all representing emergency medical services.

This is a thank-you to the readers, our friends. Newspaper people like to think we are doing important work. Sometimes, though, we might feel as if the rest of the world does not see it the same way. Not so now.

Where have we heard this before? New owners of a hotel want to open a bar for guests only, and then, before long, it grows into a neighborhood annoyance

Confusion is the order of the day in many aspects of the virus response.

In the early days of the Covid-19 crisis, the structure of East Hampton Town government changed with almost no fanfare.

The point of the stay-home directive from state, local, and national leaders is to reduce the rapid spread of the deadly coronavirus outbreak. Yet it seems widely misunderstood, both here and across the country.

Conceding that nothing is going to keep people inside as the weather warms and that many here will take to bicycles to enjoy the fresh air, an urgent plea for universal helmet use has become necessary.

State officials were right to close some parks as thousands of visitors swarmed over Montauk on Sunday. The drastic step came after the previous weekend, when thousands came to enjoy the sunshine.

Something about students’ laptops that came up at a phone-in school board meeting this week struck us as important and worth a closer look.

Writing in the first person, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc issued a rare press release this week listing some of the things he has been up to since the Covid-19 crisis began.

Social distancing has appeared to slow the transmission of Covid-19, but the number of new cases remains alarmingly high.