New York City has discovered some previously unknown science on COVID. It turns out that millionaire entertainers don’t need to be vaccinated after all.
Mayor Eric Adams is going to provide an exemption for athletes and other performers from the city’s private-sector vaccine mandate. It comes at a perfect time: The NBA playoffs are less than a month away, meaning Kyrie Irving will be able to play in home games for the Brooklyn Nets once again. Meanwhile, the MLB season is just two weeks away, meaning unvaccinated players for the New York Mets and New York Yankees will also be able to play.
.@NYCMayor at Citi Field: “I want to be clear, expanding this exemption, which only applies to a small number of people, is crucial.”
He’s carving out NYC athletes and performers from the private biz vaccine mandate, eliminating for them— but keeping it for everyone else. pic.twitter.com/2HR0rsUp6h
— Bernadette Hogan (@bern_hogan) March 24, 2022
Unfortunately, that coincidental timing does not extend to everyday New Yorkers. While Irving (annual salary: $34 million) and other unvaccinated athletes and performers are free from the mandate, the unvaccinated peasants in New York City still have to live under it. But Adams is a generous ruler: While unvaccinated adults are still barred from the workforce unless they can shoot a basketball, Adams is finally lifting the mask mandate for preschoolers. (That won’t be until April 4, though. You know, because “science”).
Adams’s two-track governance for the rich and famous compared to everyone else isn’t exactly surprising. Adams loves the celebrity of being mayor, and ruining the Nets’ playoff chances or the beginning of the season for the Mets and Yankees was never going to reflect on him well. What celebrities, such as Nets star Kevin Durant, think of Adams matters much more than what the commoners think.
? Kevin Durant sounds off on NYC Mayor Eric Adams and the vaccine mandate pic.twitter.com/WNIEwJDfDv
— New York Post (@nypost) March 13, 2022
Adams is undermining the rule of law by ensuring that it is not applied equally. There is no scientific justification for why Irving should be allowed to return to work in the Barclays Center but not, as Staten Island Councilman Joe Borelli pointed out, the arena’s ushers or janitors.
But it was always going to end this way. Irving was always going to be able to wait out the mandate if he chose. The other 200,000 or so unvaccinated adults in New York City would have no such privilege. Adams didn’t create the mandate, but he could have spiked it after entering office. Instead, he chose to keep it in place. Now, he chose to exempt millionaires from it.
Adams can talk all he wants about how he’s worried about closing down New York City again, but it doesn’t match any of his actions in office. As with many prominent Democrats across the country, Adams is not following “the science.” He’s adhering to COVID panic until it collides with other issues that Adams places a higher priority on. In this case, it’s the NBA playoffs and MLB opening day.
