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Great!
This should have been done at the state level and should have been done months ago, but hopefully some coordination w/Cambridge, Somerville, etc, can establish some uniformity.
And had it been done at the
And had it been done at the state level, you would have said it should have been done at the city level. The Covid has proven the adage, dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.
Sorry, have we met?
If it had been done at the state level, I wouldn't have been sitting here for months wondering why Charlie Baker keeps getting praised to the heavens for not lifting one finger more than necessary through this whole ordeal.
But yes, this should have been done at the local level, along with the state and federal level.
"not lifting one finger more than necessary"
Charlie Baker's modus operandi in any and all situations -- and yet he has immense support (even from Democrats -- especially our legislative leaders). Totally mystifying.
4.88 million in MA fully vaxxed
Spittle, meet ocean.
Go do some real work, Michelle. Seriously, this city's electorate (well, the meager percentage who gave a crap) fell for a fraud. Again.
A fraud?
So if most of us are vaxxed, then yeah, why not penalize the shitheads (presumably like you) who didn't get the shot because of their freedoms?
She's been in office for 8 days. Truly amazing you can get your pants on in the morning with your intellectual powers.
You presumed wrong
Both Pfizers in May at the Hynes, in an example of government actually getting something right in the form of an efficiently-run mass vaccination scheme.
Wu could have just said "I'll suggest that venues require proof," and that would have been good, well-intentioned governance. But no, it has to be a fight.
As for her having been in office for eight days, what's your point? She could have just kept her mouth shut and not announced this. She got the job.
"But no, it has to be a fight."
Is that the sound of a stone being thrown from a glass house? I believe it is.
Except
I don't take your money to participate in fights.
Child, please
Isn't it time for you to stop concerning yourself with Boston, move to New Hampshire and live your dreams?
"You disagree with me, so move"
How tolerant and progressive of you.
Life is beautiful when I get to live better than your kind. Happy Thanksgiving!
Wait
Don't you live in the 413?
I do!
And I don't get a case of the libertarian ass about what the mayor of Boston is doing (even though I work there). Next question?
Goodbye
To your credibility, then.
Well then
Perhaps Mr. LaTulippe, who is a resident of Boston, might have a tiny bit more concern of the goings on of Boston than someone who isn't.
In short, worry about your own town/county/metropolitan area before you start throwing your rocks at Boston. We can take care of ourselves, thank you very much.
Your argument
seems to be, in part, that the people who elected Wu (64% of those who voted in the election?) were duped into voting for someone who would take actions such as the one we are discussing. But did you read the story Adam linked to?
This is entirely the sort of stuff she said she was in favor of before the voters decided. Don't you just hate when elected officials keep their promises?
Well then
The Bears are who we thought they were. We crowned her ass.
What's your actual complaint?
That she's not making public health policies optional? That's not how good public health policy works. If it was up to the venues, then we're rewarding the people and business owners who think this is all fake and that endangers the rest of us.
Should restaurants also get to opt out of refrigerating chicken if they want because YOLO?
Why would a restaurant not refrigerate chicken?
They make $0 off a sickened customer.
I understand that not everyone is a rational actor at all times, but the restaurant folks I know have their heads on pretty straight when it comes to not getting customers sick. If they think that serving the unvaxxed is a problem, then they won't do it.
You'd think they wouldn't do so
but the ISD restaurant inspection records are public info and suggest that perhaps some restaurants would not be properly refrigerating chicken if not for the health inspector that caught it at one of the required twice per year inspections.
https://www.cityofboston.gov/isd/health/mfc/Default.aspx
Come on, Will
Refrigerating chicken costs money. Caring about whether the chicken is kept at the right temperature costs money. A sick customer could have gotten sick anywhere and doesn't know how well I do or don't store my chicken so they likely won't ever stop coming to my restaurant until they've gotten sick numerous times and figure out the pattern all on their own (same as every other customer having to figure it out all on their own). Besides, not every piece of unrefrigerated chicken instantly makes every person sick, so there are plenty of times people will eat here without getting sick or dying and pay me the same price I'm charging now, but my power bill will drop exponentially because I never turn the fridges on.
...and that's why we have ISD.
They Make $0 Off A Sickened Customer?
The customer bought chicken from them in this scenario. So they made a chicken sale.
History proves you wrong
Failing to refrigerate chicken saves money; it only costs money if you're caught. The world seems to be full of people who are pretty sure they'll never get caught.
The entire reason we have food safety laws and occupational safety laws is that enough people have demonstrated, over and over and over again, with predictably tragic consequences, that they don't in fact have their heads on straight about protecting the health and safety of their customers and employees.
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, anyone?
Libertarians and having no understanding of history or economics
Name a more iconic duo.
May at the Hynes
This was a failure of government that got covered up by people in Massachusetts generally being smart enough to want to get vaccinated. The fact that we still had people getting vaccinated in May, when other states had extra doses in March, is not proof of an efficient government. It's proof that Charlie Baker used the vaccination process to bypass public health departments which were largely prepared for it, and used it to help some private entities line their own pockets. It also set us back several weeks; for quite some time we were at the bottom of the pile for vaccination administration last spring.
But, sure, blame the mayor who has been in office for (shuffles papers) a week. Always easier than blaming a white guy.
Ugh
Baker sucks too. Stick your race card you know where.
Nice armchair just so stories
I worked on vaccine distribution from January to May.
Public health departments were NOT PREPARED to do this level of mass vaccination. They lacked the staff, the refrigeration, and the ability to organize at the scale needed.
Some ordered them and then couldn't organize clinics to use the doses in time. Others over ordered and hoarded them. Other cities and towns ignored their contracts and restricted their clinics to their own residents.
Hospitals made massive orders, even more massive promises, and then sat on tens of thousands of doses with the intent of favoring their enrolled patients over the general public and vaccinated some of those patients before their group was due.
HALF THE VACCINES WERE SITTING WITH NO FIRM PLANS OR SCHEDULED CLINICS! That's why the state diverted those doses back to the facilities that were churning through vaccine at very rapid rates. We got the backlog down in a matter of a month.
You have absolutely no clue - just the PR from hospitals who had to hand the over when they couldn't get their shit together and use them in the allotted time mixed with a fuckton of white whining a out BUT I WANTED MINE AT HOME WAHHH. That Globe article is riddled with a heaping helping of both - and is very thin on the numbers of what was happening at the time.
Will
you have the most superficial criticisms.
I'll give him this.
I don't think he's cynical, just dumber than a bag of hammers.
It's possible
to be both.
Right, so 2 million people
Right, so 2 million people are walking around unvaccinated. 30% of the population is more than enough to maintain high transmission rates which means prolonging the pandemic. For most diseases herd immunity only takes affect with vaccination rates of 90%+.
The vast majority of that 30%
Are under the age of 18 yo. It's terrible, I'm going to have to explain to my 6 year old, he can no longer go out clubbing and to dinner with his friends.
It's going to be a tough, but necessary talk!
Restaurant Police
If the police can't even enforce mask requirements on the MBTA how can we expect a hostess to enforce vaccine passports.
...same way they enforce drinking ages?
You require an ID or vax card, if someone doesn't provide it, you tell them you can't serve them. This isn't anything new.
Enforcement
Speaking of restaurants only, it's been my experience that very little in the way of enforcement has been done during the multiple mask mandates, including the current one, where the only folks wearing masks are either frontline employees or those who are confused about the rules. Not sure how a vaccine mandate would work under these circumstances when the community as a whole has already accepted the ~800K deaths, 19K in Massachusetts alone, as the cost of doing business.
While I'd like to believe that most people would like to see an end to this health crisis, we have to take into consideration that going forward, a certain demographic will be the majority of cases for those contracting the virus, becoming ill and unfortunately dying and I highly doubt a bureaucratic solution to their stupidity can be either implemented or enforced when this is exactly what they want.
Instead of placing the burden of enforcement on the small business owners, we need to turn to the state, who has the power to enact equitable legislation that has actual teeth other than being turned away from one restaurant only to be accepted at another. We all know that in a consumer driven society money talks, so let's start withholding tax refunds, unemployment checks, lottery winnings, licenses and permits, access to services and transportation and/or many of the other benefits we derive from the state to those who refuse the vaccine.
We'll see how fast the immutable adult children find themselves rethinking their position and joining those who've either always believed a vaccine and masking was the solution or who've seen the light after getting over their mild bout of skepticism. I'm betting that the conversion rate will be a lot higher than those whose employment depended on it.
The next question ...
What about schools? (Also a question for Gov. Baker.)
Already required at Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall, and Berklee
and probably many other places, but those are the only ones I've visited so far this fall in Boston.
Royale, Paradise are as well
I went to the Jason Isbell show but he was requiring it of all venues but pretty sure the Wang would have been checking anyway too.
also The Sinclair, O'Brien's,
also The Sinclair, O'Brien's, and Brighton Music Hall, to name another three.
This is great, and will allow
This is great, and will allow me to feel comfortable doing indoor dining. I've been to a show and museums (Harvard art) that require it and am looking forward to supporting restaurants in the winter now that outdoor diving is becoming more limited. Great news! Thank you Wu!
It was only a year and half
It was only a year and half ago that Michelle Wu and other officials went to dim sum to support Chinatown restaurants hurt by fear of coronavirus.
Dining out is already far safer today than it was in February 2020. Why all the fear?
It was a different fear in early February of 2020...
Back then you basically could not have been believed to be infected with this virus unless you had just traveled back from Wuhan on a doorknob licking tour.
There's knob licking tours?
Can I be a stop on one?
You've certainly got
the knob part covered.
Please explain
1. WTF did local Chinese restaurants have to do with Wuhan?
2. WTF aren't you whining about Italian restaurants, as Boston got nuked out of ITALY not CHINA?
Or would that require reasoning from factual evidence, not baseless racist whining?
Recently visited Montreal
Want to go to a hockey game? Visit a bar? Eat in a restaurant? Visit a grocery store that has opted in?
You need to show an ID and vaccination card if you are visiting form outside Quebec, or a Quebec Vax Pass on your phone if you are from Quebec.
This is checked outside and validated (for a vax pass) or your documents are carefully inspected.
I not only had no problem with it, I found it very encouraging to know that no plague rats need apply. People were also required to mask up if they weren't actively eating and drinking, and most places had partitions between tables, which also helped with the accoustics.
I support Boston doing this - it isn't freaking rocket science.