From: Thomas L. Cranmer
221 Donmore Dr
Great Falls, VA 22066-1102
Tel 703-450-6576, Cell 703-447-4494
ThomasCranmer221@gmail.com
May 19, 2020
To: Jeffrey C. McKay, Chairman, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
Dear Chairman McKay,
Thank you for your letter of April 30 thanking me for my testimony on the FY21 budget. Also thank you for your email of 15 May which was not responsive to my email to you of 14 May.
Your statement of 15 May said inter alia:
"Your email is founded on the mistaken assumption that Fairfax County and/or Loudoun County somehow 'shut down' Northern Virginia. This is simply not true."
First, my email did not mention Loudoun County. Second, my email was very short, and is quoted in its entirety below:
"Dear Supervisors, I believe the new shut down appears to be illegal, because no vote was taken by the supervisors and no hearing was held. The 'Responsibilities of the Board' that are published include inter alia: 'The policy actions are taken in open meetings, which the public is encouraged to attend.'"
You did not respond to the quote from the Responsibilities of the Board, and most importantly did not follow the requirement for the policy action (vote) to be taken in an open meeting and did not invite the public to attend.
The governor's Executive Order Number 62 says in the second paragraph of the first page: "On May 9, 2020, local officials from the Counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William ... requested to remain in Phase Zero." Either the governor is wrong, or you are. By requesting Fairfax remain in Phase Zero you shut down Fairfax. There was no vote of supervisors about your decision in an open meeting and the public was not encouraged to attend.
Unfortunately, you and the Board have ignored all the public testimony starting on 28 April about the FY21 budget. Nothing changed from your starting position due to the testimonies that people worked hard to prepare. Why bother to ask for testimony? You seem to have taken on dictatorial power.
Attached to your letter to the governor of 10 May is a letter from the Health Departments of Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William. On page two is a table on the bottom that shows "Ratios of Inpatients to the Previous Day for Northern Virginia and Outside Northern Virginia" for the previous 14 days. The ratios for each area are essentially identical and therefore should have the same treatment.
The sad thing is with the shutdown you and the governor are destroying people's lives, income and businesses unnecessarily. Since you are unwilling to act based on what Fairfax residents say, I recommend you pay attention to what Scott W. Atlas, MD, wrote and said in many forums. Dr. Atlas is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center. The following is a summary of his findings and the full text of his statement is attached herewith. Many other medical doctors are also saying the lockdowns are counterproductive.
KUSI Newsroom, San Diego, California, posted May 7, 2020:
Atlas explained that the lockdown and closures were done to "flatten the curve," which has been done, but those decisions were also made before we had scientific evidence about the coronavirus. The situation we are in now, is not the same as it was when we made these decisions, he explained.In his opinion piece, Atlas laid out five facts that he detailed:
- The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.
- Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
- Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
- People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
- We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.
Atlas explained, "The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group -- older people and others with underlying conditions -- is more likely to have a serious illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from COVID-19. Knowing that, it is a commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry."
You apparently have not commented on the disaster from the public schools with kids not studying, since no grading is being done. Nothing is being said about the stress on at least one parent in a family not able to work because they need to try to educate a child or children.
You apparently have not commented about the mental illness due to the emotional stress of not working and not having a secure income. Such stress can result in suicide, domestic violence, drug addition, alcoholism, and crime. The answer is to get the economy open again, not just counseling and sympathy.
I hope you will pay attention to the problems you are creating.
-- Thomas L. Cranmer, BA Yale (science), MBA Columbia, fellow American Center for Democracy, First VP Fairfax County Taxpayers’ Alliance
... and another Fairfax County resident and reader responds:
Dear Tom,
THANK YOU for making a stand and for sending such a clear and cogent response to the Board of Supervisors. I'm afraid though, that they are troglodytes with the IQ of a No. 2 pencil eraser, and therefore are dismissive. I'm afraid they are also selfish and blind and therefore cannot see or understand that thousands of small business owners and service industry employees are in dire trouble, financially and emotionally. What is your next step and how can we help put pressure on these incompetent "officials"?