San Francisco allowed city-owned buildings to reopen their gyms but forced private fitness facilities to remain closed, according to local reports.
Daniele Rabkin, who owns Crossfit Golden State, discovered the double standard when she reached to several police officers she knew, inviting them to work out in her gym. The officers told Rabkin that the fitness center at the police station had been up and running for weeks.
“Even though they’re getting exposed [to the coronavirus], there are no repercussions, no ramifications?” Rabkin told NBC News Bay Area. “It’s shocking.”
City-owned gyms are also open to judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and paralegals, according to the media outlet, while private gym owners risk being fined and/or losing their business certification if they reopen before the city says they can.
“It just demonstrates that there seems to be some kind of a double standard between what city employees are allowed to do and what the residents of San Francisco are allowed to do,” said Dave Karraker, owner of MX3 Fitness.
Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of government officials hypocritically enforcing coronavirus restrictions. Earlier this summer, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot admitted that she had her hair done, even though barbers and hairstylists were not legally allowed to operate their salons, according to the city’s guidelines. When asked why she defied her own regulations, Lightfoot argued that, as the face of the city, she needed to look presentable and thus could not afford to wait a few months like everyone else.
And just last month, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney was caught eating at an indoor restaurant in Maryland despite his own ordinance preventing Philadelphia’s restaurants from reopening. Kenney apologized, but he refused to move up the city’s reopening date.
But perhaps the best example of this double standard is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had her hair done at a San Francisco hair salon a couple of weeks ago in defiance of the city’s restrictions. When confronted, Pelosi blamed the salon and claimed that she had been “set up” — because, apparently, the most powerful Democrat in Congress can’t be bothered to check her own city’s guidelines.
With such blatant hypocrisy on display, is it any wonder that people are tiring of the shutdown? Support for coronavirus-related restrictions has steadily dropped since the shutdown first began. According to a June survey, support for COVID-19 regulations dropped from 80% to 50% in just one month.
To be sure, many people are still concerned about the virus and are willing to take certain precautions as a result. But it was much easier to follow the cities’ guidelines when we were “all in this together.” Now, however, it’s obvious that there are two groups: those who must obey the rules and those who make them.
