IT BEGINS: Connecticut Fines Residents $3,000 For Violating COVID-19 Travel Mandate

Connecticut has fined two residents for failing to adhere to the state’s edict on travel.

Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, announced Monday that two residents were fined $1,000 each for failing to fill out public health forms when they flew back home weeks ago from Louisiana and Florida, which are both on a list of states with a high number of COVID-19 cases. One of the two was hit with another $1,000 fine “after his co-worker informed officials he was refusing to self-quarantine for 14 days as required under the restrictions,” Fox News reported. 

“Look I hate to do it, but we are going to be serious and show people we are serious about this,” Lamont said during a press conference. “Overwhelmingly the number of people flying into our state from COVID-infected areas is way down. I think people are self-policing and self-regulating, but not all are. We wanted to send a message loud and clear.”

The state’s edict says “anyone traveling into Connecticut from a state that has a new daily positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents or a state with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average are directed to self-quarantine for a 14-day period from the time of last contact within the identified state.” 

“The message people need to understand is that there are more investigations going on, we need you to fill out the form,” said Josh Geballe, Connecticut’s chief operating officer. “If you need to quarantine then we expect you to do that and if not, there will be consequences.”

Some localities are going to extremes over travel and the wearing of masks. A Nashville councilwoman, for example, wants anyone who doesn’t wear a mask to be “tried for murder or attempted murder.” 

“My question goes back to legislation,” Sharon Hurt, an at-large councilwoman of the Nashville Metro Council, said during a meeting last week, The Tennessee Star reported. “But my concern is — you know I work for an organization, that if they pass a virus, then they are tried for murder or attempted murder, if they are not told … and this person who may very well pass this virus that’s out in the air because they’re not wearing a mask is basically doing the same thing to someone who contracts it and dies from it.”

“It seems to me that we have been more reactive, as opposed to proactive, and a little too late, too little,” she said. “Maybe there needs to be stronger legislation to say that if you do not wear a mask and you subject exposure of this virus to someone else then there will be some stronger penalty as it is in other viruses that are exposed.”