You’re carving the Thanksgiving turkey and there’s a bustle outside. Is it the local cops?

That query actually popped up at Phil Murphy’s briefing today. The back story is well known. The governor has been adamantly imploring residents to keep their Thanksgiving celebrations small.

So, a questioner asked, will that be enforced by police looking in dining room windows or counting cars in driveways?

The answer – not surprisingly – was no.

This brings up a conundrum of sorts. COVID cases across New Jersey continue to soar; an additional 4,063 were announced today. It’s sobering to recall that during the spring height of the pandemic, the state was averaging about 3,500 cases a day.

“They’re not good and they are trending worse,” Murphy said of the numbers.

The governor says health data attributes the increase to indoor house gatherings, not schools, casinos or restaurants, although indoor dining must stop at 10 p.m.

Murphy just limited indoor house gatherings to 10 people, but that brings us again to the enforcement question. And that depends on you.

“We rely … on families and individuals to take that responsibility very seriously,” said Pat Callahan, the head of the State Police.

The governor doesn’t have all that many options. That point comes across when you listen to his briefings, which have been increased from two to three times a week.

Think of the restrictions he imposed in the spring. One was closing parks and trails. With cold weather and the sun setting by 5 p.m., there’s no point considering that again.

Sure, we can have another lockdown, but you have to ask if that’s politically palatable. A poll this week still is giving Murphy an approval rating above 60 percent.

Yet, you have to think that will drop if restaurants and non-essential businesses are forced to shut down again. No governor is going to acknowledge political concerns when fighting a pandemic. But at the same time, no politician is going to forget about the next election. That’s next year for Murphy.

So we’re back to his pleas for voluntary compliance, especially for Thanksgiving. Murphy even quoted a doctor from Mississippi – yes, Mississippi – who said having grandma for a large Thanksgiving dinner and then having her funeral by Christmas is not a good game plan.

And Murphy said that if the state ever gets to the point where police truly need to be in your living room, “My guess is we’ve lost.”