The solid voice against injustice is echoing in NYC

Dave Maclean, The Independent

On Thursday morning, the mayor of New York City stood up at Citi Field and had two principled options open to him.

The first: double-down on the employer vaccine mandate he claims to passionately support. The second: celebrate the fact that 95 percent of New York adults have at least one shot, and lift the mandate for all.

Instead, at the home of the New York Mets baseball team, Eric Adams struck out, managing to pull off the pandemic miracle of uniting pro- and anti-vaxxers alike.

Some background: NYC requires most workers to provide proof of vaccination to their employer. But exceptions are made for entertainers and sports stars from out of town. This has led to the bizarre spectacle of unvaccinated road team players shooting hoops at the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center, while the team’s star vaccine refusenik Kyrie Irving is forced to watch from the sidelines.

The situation became weirder when the city later dropped the vaccine requirement for people entering entertainment venues. Suddenly Irving was allowed, in theory, to mingle with 17,000 fans on busy game nights. But actually playing in the game? No way.

Situations like this were the inevitable endpoint of the city’s COVID restrictions, which have failed to keep up with an evolving situation. That fact was thrown into sharp relief on Thursday, when the mayor announced a new exception for home-team athletes and stars — while leaving the policy in place for almost every other worker in the city.

Unvaccinated hot-dog vendors? No way. Unvaccinated millionaire baseball stars? Let’s play!

“Hometown players had an unfair disadvantage to those who were coming to visit,” he said. “It’s unimaginable, treating our performers differently because they lived and played for home teams. Unacceptable. It’s a self-imposed competitive disadvantage.”

Did Adams just wake up and realise he’s the mayor? He’s been in office for almost three months. This policy has been in place the entire time. “I’m going to lead this city from the front. That’s what generals do,” he continued, adding that it was a “tough” decision to make.

But creating a carve-out for millionaire baseball players, days away from the season opener, is the very opposite of making a “tough” decision. It’s what you’d expect any people-pleasing regional politician to do. Really, it’s nakedly political fence-sitting. And I’m sure Adams’ billionaire bankroller Steve Cohen — who dropped $1.5m into Adams’ mayoral campaign war chest — was looking on with a smile. He is, after all, the owner of the New York Mets.

Over on the New York Yankees Reddit page, fans who you’d expect to be overjoyed were puzzled. One of the top-rated conversations read: “Serious question, why do athletes get an exemption? What makes them different than any other employee in NY?” One person replied: “I think this is the worst part. Apparently if you’re a multimillion-dollar athlete, you matter more. They are citizens, they aren’t special.”

Adams insisted he wasn’t making the decision “loosely or haphazardly”, but just three weeks ago he was still insisting that he couldn’t make a carve out for sports stars because “it would send the wrong message”. He was right.

That message is that lingering pandemic restrictions are negotiable if it’ll lead to bad PR — or if it’ll hit the pockets of billionaire sports franchises.

The seven-day infection death rate is the same today in New York as it was back in early November. So is the infection rate. Meanwhile, vaccination rates have been flatlining for months. The science didn’t change in the time between Adams’ first claim and his second announcement. Perhaps the polling did.