Two Years to Slow the Spread

Government can’t stop moving the Covid-19 goal posts.

- By Matt Welch. Photo by Luis Alvarez/Getty

On december 6, 2021, in his last major act as mayor of New York City, Democrat Bill de Blasio announced that, to stop the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, all 184,000 private businesses in the city would henceforth be commanded to enforce vaccine mandates on their employees, and all children ages 5 and up (including tourists from countries that hadn’t yet approved pediatric vaccines) would need to show proof of full immunization before entering most indoor venues.

“Look at a country like Germany right now—shutdowns, restrictions,” de Blasio explained in a follow-up interview. “We cannot let that happen. So we had to take decisive action.”

Five days later, as the Northeast was experiencing a third consecutive winter surge of coronavirus cases, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that all businesses in New York would be required to ensure their employees and customers were either provably vaccinated or masked indoors at all times; each violation would be subject to a $1,000 fine. The new rules were applicable through January 15, “after which the State will re-evaluate based on current conditions.”

Hochul’s announcement came almost six months to the day after her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, had lifted almost all statewide COVID restrictions, including most indoor masking, on the occasion of New York meeting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) target of having 70 percent of adults receive at least one vaccination dose. “We can now return to life as we know it,” Cuomo crowed then. By the time of Hochul’s reversal, the one-shot rate among adult New Yorkers had risen to 93 percent.