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Covid 19

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Thomas Manuel inside The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook. Photo by Julianne Mosher

The Long Island Arts Alliance is asking artists, performers and creators to share their stories amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lauren Wagner, executive director of LIAA, said that over the last two years, the group has been asking creatives to share the experiences pre-pandemic and onward in hopes that new legislation will be created to further help the art and culture sector locally.

“The percentage of job losses in the arts is three times worse than other nonprofit organizations,” she said. 

LIAA serves as an alliance of and for the region’s not-for-profit arts, cultural and arts education organizations.  LIAA promotes awareness of and participation in Long Island’s world-class arts and cultural institutions in both Nassau and Suffolk counties. 

Formed in 2003, LIAA offers leadership and diverse support services to arts organizations, serves as an advocate for arts education in our schools and collaborates on strategies for economic development and community revitalization.

An advocate for artists, painters, sculptors, dancers, performers and musicians, Wagner added that when things were shut down two years ago, LIAA decided it wanted to reach out to its community to find out how people were handling the stressful changes.

That’s when LIAA came up with surveys to give a platform for creators to explain what’s going on in their lives.

“The surveys are to poll everyone’s status,” Wagner said. “Then, we use those numbers to go back to our new legislators and say, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on and we need help.’”

Most recently, a 2022 update has been posted to the LIAA website. This is the third survey to make its way around the arts community.

The survey states, “As COVID-19 extends into 2022, it is important to secure updated information about the continuing impact of the pandemic on the creative sector and creative workers. The information you provide is critical to advocacy efforts for the arts and culture sector across Long Island.”

Wagner said the more creatives who participate, the better.

“Artists/creatives were — and remain — among the most severely affected segment of the nation’s workforce,” she said. “The arts are a formidable industry in the U.S. — $919.7 billion (pre-COVID) that supported 5.2 million jobs and represented 4.3% of the nation’s economy.”

She added that they have not seen significant relief funding earmarked for the arts from the local government despite the impact the sector has on the local economy.

“The American Rescue Plan provided $385,003,440 to Nassau County, $286,812,434 to Suffolk County, and an additional $170 million to our local townships,” she said.

But when it comes to the higher levels of government, Wagner said that things often get “skewed” because of the Island’s proximity to New York City.

“I hate to say compete with the city, but we do,” she said. “We’re a great economic driver on Long Island and we get forgotten about.”

She said the surveys could “paint a real picture of what it’s like to be an artist on Long Island.”

The artists

Patty Eljaiek. Photo from Patty Eljaiek

Patty Eljaiek, a visual artist from Huntington Station, said that many people might not realize the impact art has on the community — especially financially.

“I think it’s part of the perception that art is not a business,” she said. “Art is a business.”

Elijaiek added that if an artist is looking to share their expertise with the world, they are, in fact, a business. 

“Art has been something that people appreciate but they don’t know how to put value to it,” she said.

Wagner agreed. She said that early on during the pandemic, people looked to the arts for solace.

“Artists are second responders,” she said. “First responders save lives, but artists put everything back together.”

Alex Alexander, a musician in Rocky Point, said that people who work in the arts — such as being a working musician — don’t have the typical 9-to-5 routine.

“You can plan with a 9-to-5,” he said. “I can’t plan my life as other people would.”

And Tom Manuel, executive director of The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook and a musician himself, said that his venue was shut down for 15 months throughout the pandemic, but still continued to serve its community with outdoor shows despite the lack of revenue coming in. 

Manuel said that while big industries were being saved by the federal government, the nonprofit sector was “left out” and they had to look to their sponsors to help save them. 

“We were really blessed in that we had a lot of our donors and sponsors step up and say, ‘Hey, we know that you’re closed, but we’re going to still give our sponsorship and don’t worry about programming, just stay open,’” he said.

Board members at The Jazz Loft began raising money themselves for other artists who were struggling, raising nearly $20,000 worth of assistance.

But the pain and struggle were still there as they helped their peers. 

“The statistics show of all the things that could close and not reopen, the most unlikely place to reopen after being shuttered is a performing arts venue,” he said. “That’s the data.”

Manuel said that jazz is all about improvisation — which is what musicians did — and to work through the blues.

“I think that one of the beautiful things that did come out of the pandemic is people realized how important the arts were to them,” he said. “I think there was a reconnection that was established, which is a beautiful thing.”

Artists can participate in LIAA’s survey until Feb. 16 online now at longislandartsalliance.org.

“People don’t realize this is their livelihood on the line,” Wagner said. 

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Pixabay photo

Over the last month, the pandemic trends continue to improve in Suffolk County and in the country.

After a rocky start to the New Year, brought on by an omicron variant that was more contagious than either the original strain of the virus or the delta variant, the percentage of positive tests in Suffolk County continues to decline.

As of Feb. 7, the percentage of positive tests over a seven-day average in Suffolk County was 4.9%, according to the New York State Department of Health. That is down from 14% on Jan. 21 and 27% on Jan. 7.

The trends on Long Island are following similar patterns in other parts of the world that experienced the omicron infection earlier.

South Africa “experienced the omicron wave first,” Dr. Gregson Pigott, health commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, wrote in an email. “Almost as steeply as cases rose, they fell.”

Indeed, at Port Jefferson’s St. Charles Hospital, Dr. Sunil Dhuper, chief medical officer, said there has been a “significant” drop in the number of patients hospitalized and in the number of Emergency Room visits, while the use of monoclonal antibodies to treat patients in the early stages of an infection has also dropped dramatically.

“We are not seeing the kind of volume we were seeing a few weeks ago,” Dhuper added.

The Department of Health for the country reported that the reinfection rate, which reached a peak in the last week of December and first week of January, has also been declining.

The number of hospitalizations throughout the country has fallen enough that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joseph Biden (D), recently said in an interview with the Financial Times that the country is almost past the “full-blown” pandemic phase. While he didn’t offer a specific timetable, he suggested that virus restrictions could be lifted within a matter of months.

Area doctors suggested that vaccinations and more mild symptoms among those who contracted the virus helped alleviate the strain on the health care community.

“The vast majority of those hospitalized for respiratory or other COVID-type illnesses have not been vaccinated,” Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, explained in an email.

While the overall number continues to decline, the county, and the country, need to make continued progress in reducing the overall infection rate before the all-clear signal.

Sean Clouston, associate professor in the Program in Public Health and the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, suggested that the current number of infections still leaves room for improvement.

A positivity rate above 5% which was the figure earlier this week, is “still extremely high,” Clouston explained in an email. “Currently, the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] would recommend that no one in the globe travel to Long Island, which doesn’t seem like we ourselves see this as safe objectively.”

Health care providers highlighted the difference between the reported and the actual infection numbers.

When the pandemic started in March of 2020, Dhuper estimates that the ratio of reported to actual cases was close to 1 to 10. With Delta, that number likely dropped to closer to 1 to 5, and with omicron, that’s probably about 1 to 3 or 4.

With the increase in at-home testing, the numbers “we see are more of a sampling, showing the approximate prevalence of COVID-19 virus circulating in the population,” Pigott explained.

Nachman added that Stony Brook is following guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it comes to vaccinations for people who tested positive for COVID-19.

These public health authorities generally recommend a booster dose after people feel well, which is usually 10 days to two weeks after an illness.

Doctors said they are monitoring a new version of the omicron variant, called BA.2

The new variant seems a “bit more” contagious” than the original omicron, Dhuper said. Vaccines, however, have a “reasonable level of protection to prevent hospitalizations and death.”

Dhuper said he continues to “keep an eye” on that variant.

Nachman suggested that the available vaccines continue to help.

“Right now, the [two omicron variants] do not seem to be radically different,” she suggested, as both have a short incubation period and people are protected by the vaccine.

With the number of people contracting the virus and developing more severe symptoms declining, Dhuper said the demand for the effective monoclonal antibody treatment continues to fall.

Dhuper said a recent New England Journal of Medicine study indicated that the antiviral treatment remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Sciences, was effective at treating mild to moderate illnesses on an outpatient basis over a three-day period.

“Given under controlled conditions, (remdesivir) could be one of the best alternatives that we have,” Dhuper said.

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Joe Conlon and Mary HInd are the founding partners of Virtual Therapy for Kids. The service is built around video games. Photos from Joe Conlon

By Chris Mellides

Growing up with video games was commonplace for many children and teens throughout the 1980s, 90s and beyond. But what if these pixelated worlds weren’t designed to spoil your mind as so many parents would insist on, following Saturday morning cartoons and bottomless bowls of Cap’n Crunch cereal?

Joe Conlon

What if, instead, video games helped repair those young, developing minds?

Regarding the topic, 33-year-old East Northport resident and licensed clinical social worker, Joe Conlon, and founding partner Mary Hind, a clinical social worker and therapist herself, answer back with their business Virtual Therapy for Kids. 

The service they created is built around the most accessible and widely consumable media in the world — video games, where some of the more popular titles include online available juggernauts such as Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, according to Conlon, who leaps out of his therapist’s chair and into a virtual world where “meeting the clients where they’re at” is paramount, and where playing alongside them holds its own blend of fun and incremental learning, according to him. 

Conlon recalls a time before COVID-19 when parents of children with developmental disabilities would be running late only to request a phone session for their child and Conlon would simply refuse to make the appointment. 

“I just cannot do it over the phone,” he said. “It’s so hard to connect with the kids, especially [when] audio and video wasn’t even a thought.”

Hind offers her own insight, which aligns with her business partner. Hind hails from Babylon, graduated from Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work in 2019 with a focus on Children and Adolescents and Child Welfare and is a fierce advocate for the mental health of the children she serves.

Mary HInd

“Working with a niche population and being virtual, allows me as a therapist, to capitalize on kids having sessions in the comfort of their own space,” said Hind. “This means allowing kids to create a therapeutic environment, with far less pressure than a traditional therapy setting.”

The focus is on engaging with children and adolescents between the ages of 4 and 17 in a way where cognitive behavioral treatment transforms into online gaming therapy — a concept that the young entrepreneur credits to the children that altered his view of what remote learning could become.

It’s hard to believe that as founding members, Conlon and Hind have yet to meet in person, and though they are apart, together they forge a business partnership intended for the betterment of children and the parents that require the help of professionals.

“I’m taking the symbolism in the game and making parallels to life,” Conlon said. “Kids say you’re much more yourself when you’re in these digital worlds.”

He added, “I’m trained to see where the kid has anxiety based on what the parents tell me. Kids with ADD [attention-deficit disorder] and ADHD [attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder], for example, are overly emotional.” And so they require interaction with Conlon and Hind, who log on and set goals for their kid clients to complete on a weekly basis within a particular video game title. 

In Fortnite, Conlon will instruct his clients to complete a seemingly difficult task, such as building a wall to guard against oncoming attacks from other competing online players. 

The response to the goals that the two licensed therapists set have been very positive, according to Conlon, who also said that his clients get excited completing a complex task requiring concentration, and that the parents of these children are overjoyed in sharing with a child’s achievement.  

In what seems like an endless pandemic, business partners Conlon and Hind see potential for the growth of their business and for aiding their communities both on and offline where therapy and consultation rates start at $45. Their website is www.virtualtherapyforkids.com.

Older parents attempt to understand a generation growing into the next evolutionary cycle of the internet, and what that means for the emotional health and well-being of their children can be distressing, according to Conlon. 

“How they cope in an ever-changing world where digital avatars and virtual gaming has become the norm, fitting in and navigating tenuous relationships is harder than it has ever been before,” Conlon said. 

“Diagnosing kids is what led me to diagnose myself,” he said. “Having ADHD, we’re more likely to keep thinking outside the box.”

“When you’re stuck in the storm, you go and get some bandages, go find a safe spot and go back into battle,” Conlon said, which is perhaps a lesson in gaming and life in general. 

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Chart shows COVID-19 hospitalizations during the three waves. Image from the New York State Department of Health website

Phew!

The dramatic and steep rise in positive infections caused by the ubiquitous omicron mutant of the original COVID-19 strain is declining almost as rapidly as it climbed.

As of Tuesday, Jan. 25, the seven-day average for the percentage of people who tested positive for COVID in Suffolk County stood at 12%, which is well below the 25.9% for the same seven-day average who tested positive just two weeks earlier, according to figures from the New York State Department of Health.

Those numbers, which have been declining on a daily basis, are likely to fall even further, experts said.

“The omicron wave appears to have crested in Suffolk County and New York State, but not in other parts of the country,” Dr. Gregson Pigott, commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, wrote in an email.

Public health officials attribute the welcome decline to several factors, including the increasing use of boosters, the adherence to mask guidelines and the reduction in travel and group gatherings.

“The numbers will decline slowly and steadily from the teens to single digits,” said Dr. Sunil Dhuper, chief medical officer at Port Jefferson’s St. Charles Hospital.

Sean Clouston, associate professor in the Program in Public Health and the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, added in an email that the “decline appears real and the timing suggest that the holiday period was, again, the main driving factor in the higher rates. We are likely on the other side of this wave.”

The omicron variant, which has involved milder symptoms for many of those infected, has also resulted in fewer hospitalizations.

The increase in hospitalizations is “not proportionate to the rise in cases” Pigott explained. “Our hospitals were overwhelmed when SARS-CoV-2 first hit our area [in 2020]. That has not been the case for the delta wave or the omicron wave.”

Indeed, the increase in the percentage of people who are vaccinated and boosted has helped reduce the need for emergency medical services at hospitals.

Among fully vaccinated people in the state of New York, 0.23% of the population 12 and over has been hospitalized, according to the New York State Department of Health.

That trend also holds true in Suffolk County area hospitals, public health officials said.

“We are seeing significantly reduced number of adults admitted with COVID who have had vaccines and especially those who had vaccines plus boosters,” Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, explained in an email. “We suspect that the booster augments your initial immune response, lasting at least six months.”

While vaccines and boosters help prevent hospitalizations, they do not ward off all potential upper respiratory infections, Nachman added. Getting a primary series and a booster is “critical” to reducing the risk of more significant health effects from any potential infection.

The age range of people who are hospitalized has decreased, particularly during the third wave. In the first exposure to the Wuhan strain, a majority of those who needed critical medical care were over 65, particularly before the vaccine was available.

During the omicron wave, however, there is a “noticeable shift between the ages of 18 to 49,” Dhuper said. While the proportion of people as a whole in this group may be lower, in part because people in this age range may not have as many underlying medical conditions, the total number hospitalized is still higher because of the broader spread of the virus.

People in that younger age bracket are “the major shift,” Dhuper said.

The infectiousness of omicron also created a strain on hospitals, as health care workers, even those who were asymptomatic or had minor symptoms, were testing positive.

“We had never seen the number of staff members that were out during the first or second wave,” Dhuper said. Even though the number of people hospitalized wasn’t as high, the overall health care workers available to help care for the population “really stressed our system.”

In the prior waves of the pandemic, the Catholic hospitals were able to do load balancing, in which they shifted patients to hospitals that had the bed space and health care workers.

Toward the latter half of the omicron wave, such maneuvers weren’t as easy to manage in part because of the staff shortages caused by positive tests.

Discharging people earlier and using effective but limited supply monoclonal antibody treatments for eligible patients that reduce the severity of symptoms helped reduce the strain on the system, Dhuper added.

In terms of protecting the population, Dhuper urged residents to consider the benefit of vaccines and boosters.

“The majority of patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit are unvaccinated,” Dhuper said.

The rate of people who were unvaccinated and hospitalized with COVID-19 in the week ending on Dec. 11, which was the highest figure for 2021, was 91.1 per 100,000 people in the population, compared with 4.1 per 100,000 among the vaccinated, according to the New York State Department of Health.

“Those are amazing numbers in terms of the role of vaccines and how it’s protecting people from getting hospitalized and dying,” Dhuper said.

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Sean Clouston. Photo by Rachel Kidman

By Daniel Dunaief

The same wind that powers sailboats, makes kites dart through the air, and causes flags to flutter can make being outdoors in a group safer, particularly during the pandemic.

While public health officials have suggested that being outdoors with others amid the pandemic is safer than remaining inside, the strength of the wind can affect the level of protection provided by wide open spaces.

That’s the conclusion Sean Clouston, Associate Professor in the Program in Public Health and the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, reached after studying public health data from 96,000 cases of COVID in Suffolk County from March 16, 2020 to December 31, 2020.

By combining public health data with the daily reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Clouston found that days in which the temperature was between 60 and 84 degrees Fahrenheit and in which the wind was about 5 miles per hour or less had higher COVID-19 transmission than those days in which the wind speed was faster.

This kind of study, which was recently published in the journal BMC Infectious Disease, might affect the guidance policy makers provide to reduce the risk of COVID transmission during outdoor gatherings.

“If you’re imaging yourself as a policy maker and you want to contain COVID, what do you do?” Clouston asked rhetorically. Vaccines and masks are established tools. Ensuring airflow is higher might also be important, he suggested.

Indeed, amid the early days of the pandemic in 2020, public officials closed parks in Suffolk County for a while and eventually reopened them.

An alternative could be to provide access to parks where wind speed is also protective, or to reduce the use of parks where social distancing is difficult and where wind speed is lower.

At the same time, residents might want to protect themselves by putting out fans in their backyard or some other airflow devices to keep the flow of air moving during a social gathering, reducing the chance of transmitting the virus. People might want to avoid using tents that reduce the flow of air around them.

Additionally, people could eat out at restaurants where the airflow is stronger. 

Diners can search for places where the air “moves around, so the outdoor experience is as protective as possible,” Clouston said. He recognized that the data had some variability between when people who went outside might have contracted COVID. The air flow could increase and then decrease and the average length of time from exposure to symptoms and testing could differ between people.

“Any time we deal with humans, this is the problem,” Clouston said. Researchers can’t control for everything. Instead, they have to assume people make decisions in a consistent, but variable, way.

The larger data set, with close to 100,000 cases, enabled Clouston and his colleagues to average out the effects of the time when people reported their positive COVID tests.

For numerous cases, people had a good idea where and how they contracted COVID. Even when they were at outdoor events, such as a barbecue, some people had indoor parties where they ate together.

In addition, merely being outdoors didn’t reduce the risk if people were standing in the equivalent of stale air, where wind couldn’t reach them and help carry viral particles away from others who attended these events.

Being outside if the air isn’t moving is similar to being indoors in a space with a very large ceiling and a wide space between walls, he explained. It is safer than a small room, but it is not inherently safe on its own.

As for air circulation indoors, Clouston said people have suggested that moving air in buildings could reduce the spread of the virus.

Testing the effects of having HEPA filters or air filtration systems run continuously in hospitals  compared to areas that don’t have such units could reveal the benefit of having these air flow systems. Some studies have been done on this, although more work is ongoing, he said. 

Clouston suggested that other environmental conditions could also impact the transmissibility of the virus. The heat index, for example, might explain why wind speed might be important.

The heat index “might diminish the effect or make it stronger,” Clouston said. “It can push people indoors.”

Clouston worked on this study with Stony Brook colleagues in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine Assistant Professor Olga Morozova and Professor Jaymie Meliker. The team has worked with the Suffolk County Department of Health since 2020 on different aspects of COVID modeling.

Clouston was surprised that the research revealed a threshold model wind speed. He was also surprised to see that the speed was so low. “You only need a little airflow,” he explained.

The Stony Brook scientist looked at where the positive cases were located by zip code. The summer distribution and the spatial distribution was somewhat unclear, he said.

The spread of COVID was distributed by population size and density. Population size and density are likely more important than alterations in microclimate in the summer.

The analysis is important for places when and where outdoor exposures are most common, he explained.

“This may be true in the summer on Long Island or in the winter in southern states like Louisiana when outdoor activities are more comfortable,” he wrote in an email.

Clouston has several ongoing projects. He has papers discussing the role of social inequalities and COVID, a paper looking at clinical risk factors for COVID at Stony Brook Hospital, and one describing the initial wave of COVID in World Trade Center responders.

He would like to look at the effect of outdoor protests during 2020 on the spread of COVID, which would require data on attendance at those events and at the ones in New York City.

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METRO photo

As the holiday break began to wind down and COVID-19 infection rates climbed, many parents hoped their children would be learning remotely for a week or two instead of returning to their classrooms.

Many feared that their children would get sick if they returned to school buildings and hoped that their districts would take advantage of their past remote learning experiences and allow students to return to a virtual classroom temporarily — just long enough for the holiday virus surge to pass.

While a few schools on Long Island did switch to remote and other districts offered an option, many school officials opened the doors to their classrooms as if they didn’t have a clue as to how to use alternative methods to educate.

Many people would agree that learning during the pandemic for a majority of students was difficult when a day at school meant logging into a computer instead of boarding a bus. The ideal option is to be seated in a classroom. However, in the worst of times, such as the world continuing to fight a virus that could be deadly to some, would switching to remote learning for a week or two be so harmful?

To keep our children and their families safe, school districts should be at the ready to switch to remote learning when infection rates soar. While health officials can advise not to gather during the holidays, is it such a terrible thing to allow people to be with their loved ones and then look at a screen when school is back in session?

Technology has made it possible to continue learning and working during difficult times such as these. Perfecting remote techniques and always being prepared to use them means that learning, working, basic health care and more can continue no matter what is going on around us, except for maybe a power outage.

And with more employers offering work-from-home options, many parents will be able to watch their children in the house if their children need to log into a computer to connect with their classroom. Which in turn, eliminates the old snow or sick day problem of who is going to watch the kids.

It’s been said many times during the pandemic that maybe instead of getting back to normal, it might be better to embrace a new normal. Let’s retain the lessons we have learned the last two years and increase our country’s chances of soon enjoying good times once again.

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Town of Huntington Councilman Ed Smyth (R) will run for supervisor this November. Photo from Huntington Republican Committee

Last election cycle, former Town of Huntington Councilman Ed Smyth (R) decided to make a change. Instead of running for the seat he held for four years, he aimed for supervisor after Chad Lupinacci (R) decided not to run for reelection in 2021.

Smyth said being supervisor is slightly different from being a councilman. He said while as councilman he needed to read through agendas and weigh options, now he has to start the process earlier, taking into consideration more details in the process such as was there a bidding process or an RFP done.

“It’s your obligation to create most of the resolutions and agendas and know what’s going into them and understand why they’re being put on the timetable,” he said.

Smyth said Lupinacci leaves behind significant accomplishments while in office including resolving the LIPA lawsuit and enacting term limits. Smyth also complimented the former supervisor on how well he guided the community through the early stages of the pandemic and shutdowns, adding there was no playbook to follow.

“There were never any cuts to essential services in the town, and we never had to pierce the tax cap or anything like that,” he said.

Less than two weeks in office, Smyth said he has already had to tackle issues brought on by COVID-19.

“One of the first things we’re trying to do is put together a COVID policy that tracks more closely to the CDC policies or guidance without violating New York State’s regulations,” he said.

The town supervisor added that the council found that both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state’s policies weren’t coherent and sometimes the two policies were conflicting with each other, especially regarding how many days to isolate after being exposed to the virus with no symptoms. In the end, he feels a good policy was established for town employees which will be helpful in the future.,

He said the town’s Senior Center was already affected in the new year by COVID-related staffing shortages. The center was closed to the public the second week of January; however meals were able to be delivered to residents.

Smyth also is looking forward to working with the building department and implementing new systems. He said the town is fortunate to have new councilman Sal Ferro (R) who has been in the construction trade for decades and is CEO of Alure Home Improvements. Smyth also said a priority is supporting local businesses and attracting more to the area.

Infrastructure is also on his mind with a new sewer system in Huntington Station. At the end of the year, Lupinacci and County Executive Steve Bellone (D) announced a partnership between the town and county, where both municipalities would invest $22 million to fund the Huntington Station Hub Sewer Project, which is the first one to be funded under Suffolk’s newly created Wastewater Infrastructure Fund. Money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act made the funding possible.

According to the town, approximately 229 parcels near Huntington’s Long Island Rail Road station and south along Route 110, as well as some commercial blocks of Depot Road and industrial land along the train tracks, will be connected to the sewer.

“I think it’s going to be a tremendous economic benefit to Huntington Station over the next five to 10 years, simply because, as everywhere on Long Island, if you’re not on sewers, you’re frozen in time for development,” the town supervisor said. “If we can get those lines completed, up and running sooner rather than later, it’s going to bring a tremendous amount of capital investment into the Huntington Station area, plus the environmental benefits of doing it.”

When asked what advice he would give new council members Ferro and Dave Bennardo (R), Smyth said, “Stay grounded in the community and attend as many local events as you possibly can.”

He said there’s no substitute for attending events as it gives elected officials the opportunity to hear directly from constituents.

“I would say that’s how we find out about 90% of the issues that are going on in the town that somebody in the community proactively approaches one of our five Town Board members or somebody who works with the town: ‘Hey, listen, we have a problem over here.’ There’s a drainage problem or a loitering problem or there’s an abandoned house problem or there are cars parked here that haven’t moved in two years. Just all sorts of day-to-day quality of life issues.”

Smyth said he doesn’t have any issues with Councilman Eugene Cook (I) who ran against him for supervisor. He compared it to an NHL game, “where the fights are real but you leave it on the ice. You don’t take it to the locker room.”

He said they agree on 95% of issues that come before the town, and they “hit the reset button” when they saw each other two days after the election and have had no problems working together.

Now, Smyth has his mind on the town’s future.

“It’s my goal to make Huntington the economic epicenter of Long Island,” he said. “I think it’s going to take the infrastructure to do that, to build out our existing businesses and to attract new ones. I want, when Russell 2000 companies or even Fortune 500 companies are looking to relocate to the Northeast and they say, ‘Let’s go to Long Island,’ the first place they stop is Huntington.”

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North Shore school districts share what they’re doing to keep up with the new COVID variants. Stock photo

As students went back to school after the winter break, a spike in COVID-19 cases caused widespread absences fueled by the Omicron variant. 

As of Monday, Suffolk County has experienced a 24.1% positivity rate, according to the New York State Department of Health. 

These numbers come just one day before Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced that the state will be ending contact tracing for the virus. She said that keeping up with the number of cases is “nearly impossible” with the Omicron surge and the focus should rather be on vaccinations and testing. 

“We have 12,000 new cases a day. It is almost impossible to do contact tracing the way we have been in the past,” Hochul said at a news briefing in Manhattan Jan. 11.

The county has yet to announce if it will also stop contact tracing on the local level. 

But to continue keeping children safe in their schools, some North Shore districts have implemented new protocols, on top of mask wearing, social distancing and virtual learning.

Elwood

In a statement from Elwood school district, Superintendent Kenneth Bossert said that at the high point of the COVID surge, which was immediately following the holiday break, the district had approximately 200 students isolated or in quarantine.

“Any student who is directed to isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19 has the opportunity to work remotely in Elwood, K-12,” he said. 

Northport-East Northport

Residents in the Northport-East Northport community received a letter from Superintendent Robert Banzer last week providing an update on some changes that took place due to the surge. 

At the time of the notice, which was sent out Jan. 7, the quarantine and isolation expectations for students and staff reduced for positive cases from 10 days to five days as long as the conditions in the guidance are met. These changes to quarantine protocols are also outlined and are based on vaccination/booster status. 

For remote learning while quarantining, Banzer expressed his sympathy noting, “We understand that remote learning is not ideal,” but some changes were made for students to learn while at home. 

High school and middle school students were updated on the district’s virtual quarantine support schedule, which provides periodic access to a subject area teacher throughout the day. Elementary students were granted increased access to their quarantine support teacher. 

“A key difference between virtual quarantine support versus livestreaming a classroom (aka: turning the camera on in the classroom) is the ability for students to interact with a teacher and ask questions, which is not typically possible with a traditional livestreaming approach,” he wrote. “This creates conditions that allow for full attention on students; the large majority who are present in class, and those who are online seeking virtual assistance from the subject area teacher.”

The district, along with others on Long Island, was given testing kits for students and staff to conduct at home, as well as community testing to take place on Wednesdays from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. at the Bellerose Avenue location. 

Smithtown

Smithtown schools are prioritizing in-person instruction, according to Superintendent Mark Secaur. 

“We strongly believe it to be superior to remote learning,” he stated. “That said, we do allow for remote learning via livestreaming for students who are unable to attend due to COVID-related quarantine and isolation requirements.”

He said he believes the district offers a safe in-person learning environment, so it has not allowed for students to “opt-in” to a remote environment unless they are forced to miss school due to a COVID quarantine or isolation period. 

Three Village

In a letter sent to residents, the Three Village School District has continued to keep students spaced at 3 feet and 6 feet when in the cafeteria. Plastic barriers can be put up if requested by the family, but none are being distributed to all at this time. 

The notice stated for secondary students, “Due to an increased number of COVID-19 cases after the post-winter recess, the following procedures will be enacted from Thursday, Jan. 6, until Friday, Jan. 21, at the high school, and until Friday, Jan. 28, at the junior high schools.”

These include livestreaming into classes if a student or family is in isolation. The livestream for Three Village occurs for the entire day, and not for individual periods of instruction. It is not interactive and will continue beyond the dates indicated for quarantined students only.

Comsewogue

Superintendent Jennifer Quinn said that some parents were concerned sending their children back to school after winter break, so the district implemented a 10-day virtual option for families, ending this week. Students always have the option to livestream into their classes.

“Virtual learning is good for the time being, but it’s not the best way to learn,” she said, noting that in-person learning is important for social and emotional growth. 

In conjunction with the virtual option, the district continues to follow the state’s mask mandate and 6-feet distancing. 

“When things calm down, we have written a letter to send to the governor asking that students sit at their desk with no masks,” Quinn said. “The spread is not happening in schools.”

But until the Omicron variant ceases, and things get back to some type of normalcy, Comsewogue will continue providing tests to students and staff. 

Quinn added that the day before school started, over 2,000 tests were given out. 

Middle Country 

Roberta Gerold, superintendent of Middle Country Central School District, is confident that things are looking up. She said on Tuesday, Jan. 11, that attendance in her schools is starting to get better. 

“I think we’re starting to plateau,” she said. “After reporting 10 days of absences after the breaks with family, today it’s finally slowing down.”

She added that the district is testing staff once a week, while students can get tested every Monday if the parent asks. 

“We want to make sure that if they have symptoms it’s not COVID,” she said. 

Middle Country has kept up with its mask mandates and physical distancing, as well. 

“Our positivity rate is still below the county and state rate,” she added. “We’re still as careful now as we were before.”

Students have the option to livestream into their classes if absent and are offered virtual instruction during quarantine. 

“Our staff is amazing,” Gerold said. “They are working double, triple duty to support the staff who aren’t there, and they are impacted at home, too, but are still here for our students relentlessly.”

Gerold commended the district as a whole: “We just want the students to be safe.”

Shoreham-Wading River

Superintendent Gerard Poole said that “luckily” things are better this week. 

“We are full in-person learning, but if someone is out, they can get a livestream,” he said. 

For grades K-5, students are spaced out at 6 feet and it’s the same for secondary students with activities like chorus, band and in the cafeteria. 

“The community parents continue to collaborate to help students,” he said. “And our nurses continue to be heroes … the flexibility of the staff is amazing. We are so thankful for them.” 

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Angela Kaziris, owner of Premiere Pastry, fills her car with pies to be delivered. Photo from The Ward Melville Heritage Organization

When Stony Brook Village Center businesses heard health care workers are in need of a little support, they didn’t hesitate to help.

Callie Brennan and Tim Martino, owners of Crazy Beans, dropping off meals to the hospital.

The Ward Melville Heritage Organization announced Monday that once again it has organized the village center’s restaurants and eateries to deliver meals and breakroom snacks to Stony Brook University Hospital.

“It’s disappointing that we have to start up this program again, but the health care workers are there for the Long Island community, and we have to be there for them,” said Gloria Rocchio, WMHO president.

Between April 2020 and May 2021, the Stony Brook Village/Stony Brook University Hospital Meal Train Program provided more than 12,000 meals and snacks to the medical professionals at SBUH, according to WMHO. Grist Mill Eatery, Mirabelle Restaurant at the Three Village Inn, Crazy Beans, Stony Brook Chocolate, Village Coffee  Market, Sweet Mama’s restaurant, Brew Cheese and Premiere Pastry are currently participating in the meal program.

According to WMHO, community members can become involved by donating to participating businesses.

Marios Patatinis, owner of Sweet Mama’s, said residents have been the heroes regarding the past and current meal trains due to their generous contributions. He said it enables restaurant owners to not only donate the food but helps to give the employees who prepare the meals more work hours.

“The true heroes are not the restaurants,” Patatinis said. “We have been working the hardest we can to keep afloat for the past few years, but it’s the families that are behind the scenes that are actually sponsoring these meals. They’re the ones that are the heroes in my eyes for the past two years.”

Carol Gomes, Stony Brook Medicine’s chief executive officer and chief operating officer, is grateful for the help.

“The team at Stony Brook University Hospital continues to provide a heroic level of care through this pandemic,  and the support provided by the Stony Brook village meal train program is deeply appreciated and a reflection of the ways in which the community values our efforts on their behalf,” she said.

Donations for the program can also be sent directly to WMHO, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Every dollar sent will be put toward the meal program and donations are tax-deductible. Checks can be made payable to WMHO, and “for the Stony Brook University Hospital Meal Program account” must be specified on the memo line. Checks can be sent to WMHO, P.O. Box 572, Stony  Brook, NY 11790.

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Graduate student John Yuen wearing an N95 mask for fit testing after the mask was disinfected via dry heat. Photo from SBU
Study details published in PLOS ONE could serve as a guide to practical, safe reuse of N95s.

Entering a third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the latest infection surge nationwide comes with many challenges. One of those is for a continued adequate supply of masks, including the often used N95 respirator masks for healthcare and other settings. A study led by Stony Brook University researchers discovered that a readily available method using dry ovens can be used to disinfect N95s for reuse, in settings where new masks may not be available. Their findings are published in PLOS ONE.

To combat any shortages of N95 masks during the pandemic, many institutions were forced to search for other alternatives to protect health care providers and their patients. While some studies have evaluated the impact of various methods of decontamination on how  well masks filter viral-sized particles, this study adds to such research and also addresses the equally important concept of maintaining proper mask fit after decontamination.

“Our study demonstrated that treatment of N95 face masks using dry heat was sufficient to inactivate COVID-19, while preserving the ability of these masks to filter aerosolized particles for potentially exposed workers,” summarizes Kenneth Shroyer, MD, PhD, lead author and the Marvin Kushner Professor and Chair of Pathology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Since heat is potentially more readily accessible than other methods of decontamination in many healthcare facilities, the researchers used dry heat sterilization to disinfect the masks. They also used X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, contact angle, and electron microscopy collected at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—to test for changes in the material of N95 masks post decontamination.

By contrast, other methods for disinfection, including treatment with hydrogen peroxide vapor, may be equally effective in specially equipped facilities but are usually not available in most hospitals or outpatient clinical care facilities.

Dr. Shroyer and colleagues also tested autoclaving, which is widely available in most hospitals and is a proven method of sterilization but found that this caused the fit of the respirator onto the user’s face to fail. Thus, the researchers ruled out autoclaving as a safe method to decontaminate N95 masks.

The research involved experts from the School of Medicine, the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Institute for Electrochemically Stored Energy, and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), along with colleagues in the Interdisciplinary Science Department and the Center for Functional Materials at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

For additional details about the initial studies that served as the foundation for this study – which was launched during the first wave of the pandemic in April 2020 – see this story.

Dr. Shroyer emphasizes that the findings from the study highlight the importance of both optimal disinfection and mask fit and suggest that when no other decontamination alternatives are available, N95 masks can be reused after dry heat treatment to ensure the safety of health care workers.

 

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