Syracuse, N.Y. — An exasperated Onondaga County executive on Tuesday said he couldn’t believe that people were angry that they had to pause their golf game at a time when people were dying of coronavirus.

On a day he announced the county’s sixth COVID-19 death, Ryan McMahon dialed up the angst against those who continue ignoring — or complaining about — social distancing orders.

He also warned against an Easter dinner with extended family, pointed out how the virus affects nearly every town and revealed just how young our COVID-19 positive residents are.

But first, golf.

‘Are you kidding me?’

It’s been a reoccurring theme for days now: the disappointment surrounding McMahon’s decision to close golf courses. On Tuesday, he defended the decision as necessary — even if golfing posed a low risk — and said saving even one life was more important than giving up golf for a couple of weeks.

“When are we going to look at some of these numbers and realize, taking a couple of days off from golf is not a big sacrifice, when we’ve had six people die, five people die in the last week?” McMahon said. “We have 15 percent of our cases are in the hospital. I mean, are you kidding me?”

“Let’s put things in perspective as a community,” he continued. “I’m still getting emails from people, telling me how they’re so safe on the golf course. I don’t care right now about you missing a day or two on the links over the next two weeks. I care about the people in the hospital, and how I make sure that’s not you, or your neighbor, or your grandma, or your grandpa, or your parent. That’s what I care about.”

McMahon went back to it again later.

“There are people in the community who just don’t get it yet, and I don’t know what else needs to happen to get it,” he said. “We did have some people in the community reach out to me specific to golf. I had golf courses reaching out to me on the quiet — they don’t want their members knowing this — saying ‘thank you’ for doing what you did, our employees were nervous. We’re in a bad spot to try to regulate this. We’ve had a lot of golf professionals saying, ‘thank you.’

"We’ve had a lot of others, thinking in the short-term window, ‘please let us go play golf, it’s going to be nice out today.’ Everybody like you is thinking the same thing; you get 100s of people out on a golf course, you’re going to have 100s of hosts there to spread this, which means 100s of quarantines, which means pressure on our hospitals, and our health department, and it means this goes on longer, so ... your courses are shut down for months, not for two weeks.”

Needless to say, McMahon isn’t going to change his mind on this one.

No grandma and grandpa at Easter

The county has warned of lots of ways coronavirus continues to spread: going to work while sick, standing too close to someone at a supermarket and throwing house parties.

Now, there’s another confirmed trend, and this one may be the hardest: visiting mom or dad, grandma or grandpa.

All six deaths in the county so far have involved people old enough to be grandparents. And there are now confirmed cases of seniors being infected by loved ones coming to visit, McMahon said.

“Mom and dad are getting lonely,” McMahon acknowledged. "We have many, many cases now where people are visiting their loved ones, with good intentions, and getting them sick. We can’t do it.

“Specifically, this weekend is a holy weekend for various religions (Easter, Passover), we need to stay home we need to use technology ... we do not need to put mom and dad at risk because we’re getting families together.”

“We see it, the data shows it, positive cases show it, we know that if anybody has compromised immune systems, and they get this thing, it’s a killer,” McMahon added. “We need to stay home this weekend.”

McMahon said he’ll be celebrating Easter with only his immediate family.

Our youngest cases

For the first time, McMahon revealed Tuesday that Onondaga County has two COVID-19 cases involving children younger than 10 years old.

Overall, there are 12 cases involving people younger than 19 years old — none of them have required hospitalization so far. McMahon has praised parents for generally keeping their children safe, leading to the low number of infections among kids.

But the two young cases prove the risk: one of the children caught the virus from a parent.

The other one? A play date led to that infection, McMahon said.

What do Pompey, Syracuse’s Southwest side have in common?

These maps show the spread of coronavirus in Onondaga County by town and zip code. In each map, yellow represents under 5 cases per 10,000; light orange, 5.1 to 10 cases per 10,000; dark orange, 10.1 to 15 cases per 10,000; red, 15.1 to 20 cases per 10,000; and dark red, 20.1 cases and above per 10,000.

McMahon has repeatedly preached that coronavirus can hit any community, regardless of size or demographics. And now, the data proves it again.

The hardest hit town, based on per capita infections, is rural Pompey: there are 15 confirmed cases from a population of roughly 7,000. That’s more than 20 cases per 10,000 residents.

Coming close behind are: the southwest side of Syracuse, town of DeWitt, town of Skaneateles and town of Otisco. Each of those locations has between 15 and 20 cases per 10,000 residents.

Meanwhile, other areas of the city — such as Eastwood and Meadowbrook — show fewer than 5 cases per 10,000. Overall, the city is doing about average.

Towns reporting fewer than 5 cases per 10,000 are Lysander, Van Buren, Marcellus and Fabius. Neither Elbridge nor the Onondaga Nation have any confirmed cases.

“This is everywhere, and it’s impacting neighborhoods and towns,” McMahon said. “The virus does not care if you’re an affluent community, a working class community, or a rural community.”

McMahon said that an even deeper dive into the data, using geocoding, shows “crystal clear” patterns surrounding clusters of infections.

“There can be no other explanation, other than people are gathering, and they’re not taking this seriously,” the county executive said. “I don’t believe in chance when you see it across the county.”

Staff writer Douglass Dowty can be reached at ddowty@syracuse.com or 315-470-6070.

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