Ask Amy: Neighbor's gathering creates COVID risk
Dear Amy: How should I have handled my neighbor having an Easter party, despite a shelter-in-place order in our state?
From my backyard, my husband and I could clearly tell that they had multiple people over.
I emailed the neighbor and asked him to please consider refraining from having guests over, as it's in violation of the order and increases the risk for COVID in our neighborhood. I asked him at the very minimum to have his guests sit away from our shared property line.
He replied that they are doing their best and that I am violating their privacy by "actively listening in on a private interaction on their property."
Amy, my son is in an at-risk group. Furthermore, violations of the order are a class C misdemeanor (They know this).
I wrote again to explain my son's situation and tried to de-escalate the situation, but I got no response.
How should I have handled this? Should I have kept my mouth shut, despite the danger to my child?
Do I need to be uncomfortable every time I'm in my own backyard now? I'm so stressed and upset by this. I have to live adjacent to these people, who obviously only care about themselves.
-- Quarantine Nagging Nellie
Dear Nellie: You don't describe your property and how it relates to your neighbor's property, but - based on my own (non-official) knowledge of how this virus spreads - the risk to you through sharing an outdoor space from a normal neighborly distance would be minimal, if not nonexistent -- unless you are walking, running, or biking too closely (or behind) someone outside who is infected and also exercising.
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