Do they really not know? Or why won’t they tell us?

When posed the simplest questions at his daily press conference, Broome County Executive Jason Garnar has a standard answer: “I don’t know”

How many tests are there in Broome County? “I don’t know”

How many ventilators are there in the county? “I don’t know”

How many ICU beds in the county? “I don’t know”

Why don’t we have tests like the 10,000 available in Ithaca? “I don’t know”

What are the profiles of persons who tested positive? “I can’t say”

What is being done to inform and help isolate those who come into contact with persons who have COVID-19 or die from it? We Don’t Know.

The Director of the county’s Health Department can’t seem to help him either. How many persons at the nursing home with so many cases–and how have their families been followed, or tested, or had their contacts tracked? “I don’t know, ask them”

We do know, thanks to press reports from family members, that the second person who died from COVID-19 died without the county informing the family of the death or county officials asking who came into contact with the family or the loved one they lost.

And what of the hundreds of staff, inmates, correctional officers and visitors to the BC jail in March, which had a working and infected correctional officer on duty? We don’t know. Scores of persons outside and inside report no questions asked, no persons followed, only two persons inside apparently tested.

County residents are smart. They can see through these daily evasions and diversions. Look at only a few of the comments on Jason Garnar’s facebook page: