NYC Mayor de Blasio Unveils Vaccine Mandate for Many Indoor Settings

Libby | August 3, 2021
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced Tuesday that most indoor settings — including restaurants, entertainment venues, and gyms — will require proof of vaccination for service.

This requirement comes as a part of his “Key to NYC Pass” program, which will officially launch on Aug. 16, though enforcement is not set to begin until Sept. 16.

“It will require vaccination for workers and customers in indoor dining, in indoor fitness facilities, indoor entertainment facilities,” de Blasio said, according to the New York Post. “The only way to patronize these businesses indoors is if you’re vaccinated.”

De Blasio also hinted that social ostracism is coming for the unvaccinated: “If you want to participate in society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated.”

This vaccine mandate comes one day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) suggested that private businesses only serve vaccinated customers.

“Private businesses, I am asking them and suggesting to them, go to vaccine-only admission,” Cuomo directed at New York businesses during his Monday press conference.

After using his power to require vaccines or weekly testing for state employees in the public sphere, Cuomo is looking to influence people who have yet to get vaccinated through private business mandates in order to pressure those people into getting the vaccine, which is still yet to be fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“If you say to people, ‘Well, if you don’t have a vaccine, you can’t get into these establishments,’ then you’ll see a real incentive to get vaccinated,” the governor said, highlighting the state’s goal to coerce the unvaccinated.

Both de Blasio and Cuomo have signaled what the coming binary in NYC and broader New York will be soon enough: get vaccinated or be ostracized from living without restriction.

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