County Executive Dan McCoy is setting up an online portal, giving people a forum to complain about any COVID protocols not being followed.
If the comments on Facebook after one of his thankfully rare press conferences are any indication how that is going to go, we are not at all confident it will be anything but a platform for every COVID Karen in Albany County with little better to do than drive around shops and stores looking for people not wearing a mask.
Regrettably, we can see them now, hiding behind a rack of clothing, marked way down by the merchant hoping to sell a few more things and maybe salvage the Christmas season, just waiting with finger on the cell phone camera trigger for some maskless person to meander by.
Then, without even a hint of warning, the COVID Karen relays the message to the portal and waits to see the store’s name in the paper announcing the $1,000 fine. She, the COVID Karen, is please with herself because she goes to bed at night knowing she probably a small role in saving the human race from certain extinction.
The thing is, while Hochul did attach a fine to her mask mandate, which went into effect a day before McCoy announced his online tattletale portal, it carried no teeth at all. She didn’t even make the counties enforce the mandate. She asked them to very nice and kind like to pretty please enforce my mandate. And about half said no way, we are not doing that. It’s hard telling what the other half are doing but we have not heard of any fines being doled out anywhere across the state.
And, honestly, we don’t expect any. If the state or the county wanted to make an example out of someone, there have certainly been chances to do just that by now. Nobody likes wearing a mask and the notion of 100 percent compliance is laughable.
That is what makes McCoy’s portal idea such a waste of time. If he wanted to start implementing fines, he could start nearly anywhere in Albany County where there are more than 10 people gathered at any one time and he could start with the fines.
He doesn’t need to recruit anybody to do any vigilante work when there won’t be any ramifications anyway. Small businesses and businesses in general are having a difficult enough time as it is without having to worry about having COVID Karens having out in the coat racks.
