Today's announcement by New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson about the disparities in COVID19 cases in his city was highlighted by his release of positive case numbers broken down by zip code. Rockland County has been routinely giving positive case numbers organized by zip code. In Greenburgh? No such luck. The County gives the public daily total numbers for each village and one big number for unincorporated Greenburgh's 43,000 residents (information which has often lagged by days) but no more detail than that.
From correspondence with Town and County officials, we do know that the Greenburgh Town Supervisor and Police Chief receive a daily update of positive cases in the town identified by name and address. The question of whether or not you want Supervisor Feiner and Chief Ryan knowing your personal medical information is a topic I'm not going to deal with here. These officials assert they are bound by some sort of non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that is given to them and presumably drafted by Westchester County. Despite my requests, I have not been able to receive a copy of this NDA. I would be particularly interested in the county attorney's opinion which presumably accompanies this NDA.
Putting this mysterious NDA to the side, we clearly understand the importance of protecting individuals' privacy. Whether such individuals sacrifice that right to privacy by acting negligently - for example routinely not maintaining social distance or not wearing a mask - is yet another complex question which I can't answer. Consistent with HIPAA, personal identifying information should not be released to the general public (do immediate neighbors, particularly in an apartment building have a right to know? especially if they are high risk? - stop with the complex questions!).
If the county has decided that Paul Feiner is entitled to know whether you have tested positive for COVID19, what rights to information should the rest of us civilians have? How does the County decide which officials are entitled to your medical information?
We should we care, you might ask? After all, knowing that one zip code has a lot more cases than another shouldn't impact behavior, or should it? Or would a particular school district having a very large number of cases impact, for example, plans for summer activities, or even opening on time in September?
Well, we do have some hint of discrepancies. The Greenburgh village breakdown show us that the positive cases in Greenburgh's villages ranges widely, from Elmsford's 3725 per 100K to Irvington's 1162 per 100K. Put another way, Greenburgh's village with the lowest per capita income ($38K per censusreporter.org) has more than triple the positive case rate of Irvington, Greenburgh's village with the highest per capita income ($84K). Maybe you're not interested in further information that may shed light on such inequities in our "community" that have policy implications. I know that I'm certainly interested in learning more about such discrepancies.
What do you think? What do Greenburgh residents have a right to know about positive cases in their community? And when should they know it?
This confirms that Greenburgh is a nowhere place lorded over by a nowhere man. On the other hand, folks are so covid fatigued outside of MWB is anyone paying attention to cases when it’s all bad news despite the slowing of the beast. NYC and it’s surrounding suburbs are facing a dark decade.
ReplyDeleteNationally here is the situation in a nutshell (from The Week):
Packages on doorsteps, dropped by unseen and poorly remunerated agents of the world's richest man.