Could Philly be ending its COVID mandates soon?

by

Cheryl Bettigole, from BillyPenn.

We noted, on February 3rd, that Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner, Cheryl Bettigole, said that lifting the city’s COVID-19 mandates would likely be several months away.

Of course, Dr Bettigole has an appointed position, not an elected one, and it seems that the elected Democrats who control the City of Brotherly Love might be moving somewhat faster than she would like:

The vaccine mandate for dining inside restaurants was being enforced by restaurant hostesses, and one has to wonder just how diligently these minimum wage workers were doing so. As we have previously noted, there was a theft of some 5,000 blank vaccination cards from the Penn Medicine Clinic in Philly’s Center City, and two nurses in Amityville, New York were arrested for selling faked COVID-19 vaccination cards. How could anyone expect poorly-paid restaurant hostesses to scrutinize vaccination cards, and spot fakes? And how would anyone not think that a $20 bill, presented when the hostess asked, “Ihre Papiere, bitte,” would often get prospective diners through?

The city government was depending on people who were not their employees, and encouraging a black market in faked cards at the same time. And I will be honest here: I absolutely support people forging vaccination cards, and hope that there are thousands upon thousands of those black marketeers, and that no more of them get caught.

    And if cases continue to decline, the mask mandate could also lift some time later.

    The benchmarks would create a novel system where restrictions could ease when overall illness falls and be reimposed in the event of a COVID-19 resurgence. The effect could ease the bite on hotels and restaurants, which have lost significant business during the pandemic, while also protecting people’s health and reducing the burden of illness on hospitals and caregivers.

    Relaxed mandates won’t be welcomed universally in the city. Jennifer Kolker, associate dean for public health practice at Drexel University, said last week she thought states were moving too quickly to end their vaccine mandates. “I would love to see them maintain the vaccine mandate,” she said before the city’s plan came to light.

Well, of course she would; the Karens of our society always want stuff like that.

Further down:

    Business was down 37% in Philadelphia’s leisure and hospitality industry through the second quarter of 2021 compared to the same time in 2019, before the pandemic began, according to a report last week by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That’s greater than the national drop over the same time period of 13%. The industry is the city’s fourth-biggest job sector and 76% of its workers live in Philadelphia.

    (Ben) Fileccia (director of operations & strategy for the Philadelphia Restaurant and Lodging Association) and others in the industry said there have been hotels that have lost events and conferences to competitors in the city’s suburbs because those areas did not have mandates.

In other words, people are tired of the mandates and restrictions, and have been voting with their actions, and their wallets, against them. The greatest victims? The hospitality industry’s workers, three-quarters of whom live in Philly, the poorest of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, and the only big city with a poverty rate above 20%.

Of course, for highly paid people like Commissioner Bettigole and Dean Kolker, for people like Mayor Jim Kenney, the struggles of the working class are abstractions, something that they can neatly measure against the probabilities of contracting the virus. To them, the need to put food on the table is no different from the goal of not contracting the virus, but to the single mother with hungry kids to feed, the need to feed her children is far more immediate than the probabilities of contracting COVID-19.

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