Mayor Adams says performers are exempt from vax mandates — does that include politicians, who are clowns?
Owing to the latest wave of Mayor Adams’ magic COVID wand, unvaccinated Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving will be allowed to play home games at Atlantic and Flatbush. The ushers at the Barclays Center, on the other hand, and the guy who pours the beer and the ticket taker, they still have to get the jab or get fired.
You have to hand it to Hizzoner. His exemption to the workplace vaccine mandate for super-rich athletes and entertainers at least codifies what we have known all along: COVID rules are for the dirty masses, not important people.
Now that the mayor in his merciful benevolence is allowing pre-K students to learn mask free, the workplace vaccine mandate is the last big COVID restriction to remain in place. But why? New Yorkers are now free to roam inside and out around their millions of neighbors except when they go to work?
That obviously makes no sense, which is presumably why Adams says he won’t really bother enforcing the mandate anyway. This week the mayor had this to say about jabs and jobs, “As we stated, the name of the game is that we’re not going to be heavy-handed with the private sector mandate,” adding, “We’re not going to run around the buildings and check vaccine cards.”
Then why have the rule at all?
Meanwhile, police unions are rightfully furious that vaccine-free Yankees and Mets can wear NYPD and FDNY hats to honor our finest and bravest during a ballgame, but anyone refusing a vaccine is banned from wearing the actual uniform. As with so many issues like crime, and vagrancy, Mayor Adams needs to rip the band aid off and make bold moves. His half measures meant to please everyone are tarnishing the promise of his new administration day by day. And if he won’t lift the workplace mandate he should at least have some decent explanation as to why he won’t.
For many small business owners the most crushing aspect of the COVID response was not the rules and restrictions themselves, but the fact that they seemed to change every five minutes, with each change incurring more expense. Those businesses need to know what the rules are not just today, but going forward. Adams’ vague promises that the mandate could end eventually are not nearly good enough.
At the beginning of this whole COVID fiasco, for those who can remember that far back, we were supposedly “all in this together.” It was always a lie; today, with Mayor Adams’ celebrity carve out it’s a sick joke.
The mayor insists he wants Gotham to swing again, that we are social creatures and New York needs its swagger back. Well, if that is what he wants, a good way to get there is to allow people to actually go to their jobs and to allow employers to stop being the vaccine police.
Technically, I suppose, this exemption should apply to our city’s political leadership, since clowns are entertainers, but people with actual jobs, who make the city run and rattle deserve to be out from under the yoke of vaccine mandates, as well. It’s over, Mayor Adams. New Yorkers want our lives back, it’s what we elected you to do.
David Marcus is a Brooklyn-based columnist and author of “Charade: The Covid Lies That Crushed a Nation.”
