Sheldon, Iowa — Despite consistent advice to practice social distancing, and avoiding groups of ten or more people in the face of the COVID-19 threat, many in Sheldon have reported seeing numbers of teens and younger congregating on tennis courts, basketball courts, parks and play grounds owned by the City of Sheldon and the Sheldon Community School District.
Sheldon City Manager Sam Kooiker has taken to social media to ask parents to please ask their children to not congregate in these places.
As for the teenagers gathering, Kooiker says he understands that many teens feel invincible.
(As above) “Well, all of were teenagers once so we all know that teenagers have an air of invincibility. I had that when I was a teenager and we’re running into the issue now, we have kids that are gathering in groups of more than ten, not paying attention to the social distancing and it puts our school district and the city’s police department an awkward position, and we’re just appealing to kids to follow the rules and to not be close to each other because this is a serious disease.”
Kooiker reminds us that one can spread the COVID-19 virus without showing symptoms themselves.
(As above) “You can carry this to your families and your grandparents and not even affect you, so this is a very serious disease and kids need to take it seriously too.”
Kooiker says this is a very serious situation, so please be careful.
(As above) “It’s a very frustrating disease because you can get it and not know you have it and pass it on to ten other people very easily, and exponentially it can go up so we have to be very careful, cognizant. But this is a serious situation and in order to flatten the curve we all have to recognize the social distancing and how important it is and we also want to we’ve been working very closely with our emergency management, Jared Johnson and the hospital, Rick Nordahl, and, you know if somebody is exhibiting symptoms we ask that they not just present themselves at the hospital that they that they call the the clinic or call two one one for assistance.”
In his social media post, Kooiker wrote, “This is a serious disease and community spread has been documented in other places. We do not want to be in a situation where we need to close the parks down, because the logistics and enforcement of this will become very difficult.”
