Toddlers finally freed from city's mask mandate

 

NY Post 

 Mask-wearing will finally be optional for toddlers in city schools soon, Mayor Adams announced Thursday — about two weeks before the end of classes.

The controversial face-covering mandate for youngsters ages 2 to 4 in public schools, daycare centers and other city-run settings will be lifted beginning Monday, according to a press release. The last day of class is set for June 27.

“I have always said that the science will guide us out of the pandemic, and because we have followed the data, which shows that cases are steadily falling, we‘ve beaten back the latest COVID-19 surge,” Adams said in a prepared statement.

The mayor had initially announced the impending end to the policy two months ago, before reneging amid increased spread of the virus.

In the announcement Thursday, Adams said City Hall continues to “strongly” recommend that “New Yorkers of all ages continue to wear masks indoors.”  The city will keep providing masks at DOE schools for those who want to wear them, according to the press release.

Daniela Jampel, an outspoken advocate for lifting the toddler mask mandate, told The Post she was “overjoyed” that little ones would get the same “freedom of choice” as other New Yorkers to not wear masks.

“Toddlers were masked for far too long in this city, and today’s announcement is a step in the direction of restoring normalcy to our youngest residents,” said Jampel, a mother of a 4-year-old and former former city Law Department staffer who in April crashed an Adams press conference in City Hall to demand he lift the rule. 

Asked why Adams had opted to lift the mandate now as the school year comes to a close, a mayoral rep referred The Post to a series of tweets in which the city’s top doctor declared that the Big Apple is “finally past the peak of this wave.”

“Cases have fallen since May 23, giving us confidence that we have passed the peak and we are heading into a safer environment,” wrote Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan.

  They wait til the end of the school year to do this. That's the real safety metric they are basing this on. Vaccine extortion worker mandates remain intact.

 

Kathy's clowned

NY Daily News

A Nassau County judge ruled Monday the state’s mask mandate can’t be enforced, scrapping an order reinstituted by Gov. Hochul amid concerns about a winter surge of COVID-19 cases.

State Supreme Court Judge Thomas Rademaker in Mineola decided the state Department of Health didn’t have the legal authority to implement the mandate, and that it was up to the state Legislature to do so if needed.

The mandate “is a law that was promulgated and enacted unlawfully by an executive branch state agency, and therefore void and unenforceable,” the judge ruled.

 The state had initially instituted a mask mandate in April 2020 that ended last June for vaccinated individuals. However, Hochul announced in mid-December it would go back into effect for at least a month. The mandate covers businesses and venues, as well as schools, public transit, homeless shelters, correctional facilities, nursing homes and health care settings.

Governor Kathy still thinks its the pandemic of the unvaccinated

 

NY Post

Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered offices, restaurants and shops statewide to require that staff and customers either show proof of vaccination or wear masks — or face a $1,000 fine per violation.

The new mandate on businesses — many of which are struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns and battling workforce shortages — will take effect Monday and applies statewide.

Businesses that fail to enforce the rules could be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including a maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation.

It will remain in force until Jan. 15, when it could be extended, officials said. The governor’s office said local health departments will be in charge of enforcement.

“I speak all over the state and they’re asking for help. They’ve done everything they can, I applaud our local governments, our county executives, our county administrators and the local public health departments for doing what they can do,” Hochul told reporters after an unrelated event in Manhattan on Friday. “I said I’ll give them air cover, I will give them the protection.”

“This was completely avoidable — [a] completely avoidable circumstance,” the governor continued. “This is a crisis of the unvaccinated.”

Poor poor Kathy, poor stupid stupid Kathy. 

NYC Social Services Dept. official doesn't think homeless people can get or spread COVID

Here is DSS Deputy Commissioner Erin Drinkwater downplaying the importance of the homeless wearing masks on the subway, despite the governor's order for masks to be worn on mass transit. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/Qy61QBwtVS

— Robert Holden (@BobHoldenNYC) April 23, 2020

Election day COVID-era Goofus and Gallant

The U.S. Open is exempt from city vaccine mandate and federal face mask guidelines

  

NY Post

Usually the U.S. Open is just about super tennis. Now it’s trying to avoid being a super spreader.

When the two-week tourney starts Monday in Flushing Meadows, health is going to be the priority, both mental and physical.

Players will get COVID-19 tests upon arrival, and again every four days with a positive result forcing a withdrawal.

Whereas Wimbledon required proof of negative tests and asked fans to wear masks around the grounds, the U.S. Open will do neither. Despite cases spiking due to the Delta variant, fans won’t have to be vaccinated or wear masks outdoors at Flushing Meadows.

With local vaccination rates around 70 percent, they’re banking on their protocols and common sense to keep the tourney from becoming a super-spreader.

“This is not a USTA decision or a U.S. Open decision, this is a decision made with New York City. Of course, we’ve been tracking what’s been happening at the baseball games and other events,” said Dr. Brian Hainline, a U.S. Tennis Association first vice president. “The goal is not to prevent a single infection: The goal is to prevent an outbreak and an uptick.

“We’re still relying on the goodwill of people. The unvaccinated, although it’s not going to be enforced, really should be wearing masks. … It’s like any other aspect of New York City, going to the baseball game, you make an informed decision. But based on all the data we have — we believe the current policy makes good sense in terms of avoiding any sort of a regional outbreak as a result of this event.”

Fans won’t have to wear masks in Arthur Ashe or Louis Armstrong even when the roofs are closed, because both are considered outdoor venues. Players won’t be sequestered like last year (although 75 percent will be at one of the two designated hotels) and the USTA had no figures on how many were vaccinated.

The Blaz goes full anti-mask

 

 NY Daily News 

 Mayor de Blasio balked at the idea of reinstating an indoor face mask mandate in the city on Monday even though COVID-19 infections are ticking back up. Instead, he called for more vaccination efforts throughout the five boroughs.

“Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is,” the mayor said during a live-streamed press briefing. “So we do not intend a mask mandate. We do intend to double down on vaccination.”

Over the weekend, some local public health experts and lawmakers began calling for a resumption of indoor mask wearing for all New Yorkers — regardless of vaccination status — citing a slow but steady rise in coronavirus infections driven by the Delta variant.

But de Blasio said in his briefing that it would be “a disservice” to heed those calls and argued all focus should instead be on boosting vaccinations.

“Let’s address the problem by getting more people vaccinated and going right at it, and knocking down this variant,” he said from City Hall. “You know, a mask doesn’t arrest the progress of the variant — vaccination does. So we’re gonna go where the real impact is. That’s the bottom line.”

Democratic Manhattan Councilmember Mark Levine, who chairs the City Council’s Health Committee, took issue with de Blasio’s argument and said an indoor face mask mandate could safeguard New York against a major COVID-19 outbreak while the vaccination campaign continues.

The Blaz keeps mask mandates going for schools as he promotes restaurant weeks where masks don't apply as infections spread

 

AMNY

New York City doesn’t have plans to change its current mask-wearing policy in schools and adhere to recently updated guidelines from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday. 

In a major policy shift last week, the CDC called for the full reopening of schools across the country even if doing so meant dropping its three-foot social distancing requirement and recommended only unvaccinated adults and children wear masks while inside school buildings. 

The New York State Department of Health is currently reviewing the amended guidelines and their decision on whether to relax mask wearing requirements in schools could impact whether the DOE adopts the new CDC recommendations. But for now New York City public school families should expect that teachers, staff and students regardless of vaccination status will need to face coverings in classrooms this fall, according to de Blasio. 

“There will be a lot of communication before school and once it begins for now assume we are wearing masks,” de Blasio told reporters during a morning press conference. “ But that could change as we get closer…we will be driven by the data and see what the science has to say.” 

The CDC guideline changes come amid a national push to boost slowing vaccination rates across the country. De Blasio started off his Monday press conference touting New York City’s vaccination rate stating that 4.4 million city residents are now fully vaccinated against the virus.  

According to the CDC, about 4.9 million New York City residents are fully vaccinated against the virus and 5.4 million, or about 64% of the city’s population, has received at least one dose of the vaccine which falls just a little below the nation’s overall rate.

 NY Post

New York City diners will be able to enjoy temporarily discounted meals at more than 500 restaurants for five weeks this summer, in a lengthened Restaurant Week aimed at helping struggling restaurants recover from the pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.

The newly extended tourism and hospitality industry promotion will start on July 19 and end Aug. 22, the mayor said at his daily press briefing.

“Restaurant Week is launching next week, in a new, amazing form,” de Blasio said, boasting of more than a month of “great discounts, great specials” across the five boroughs.

“This is going to be amazing,” he said. “Think about restaurants you’ve always wanted to go to. Here’s the opportunity to experience them, and it’s a wonderful, super Restaurant Week that’s going to be really inviting again for New Yorkers and a special opportunity to come out and celebrate for folks who are not from around here.

COVIDIOTS at the Queens Criminal Courthouse

 

Queens Eagle

A wave of new COVID-19 cases has hit the Queens District Attorney’s Office, but that hasn’t stopped high-ranking prosecutors from ditching masks inside the Queens Criminal Court building and adjacent offices, according to staff and defense attorneys.

Screenshots of virtual court proceedings obtained by the Eagle show one top official, Criminal Court Unit Chief Kevin Fogarty, appearing maskless last month during virtual court conferences inside his office, while at least one other masked assistant district attorney stood nearby. Fogarty again appeared maskless during virtual conferences while sitting near another staffer on Nov. 17, according to an email shared among public defenders.

Another veteran prosecutor, Felony Trial Bureau Four Unit Chief Neil Gitin, has also appeared without a mask during at least two virtual proceedings, including one where a screenshot shared with the Eagle shows him talking to a person off camera.

Some Queens prosecutors say a few colleagues, particularly supervisors, have created dangerous conditions in the offices since staff returned for in-person work in mid-October.

“There are definitely employees that think masks are taking away their freedom and that COVID is a liberal conspiracy,” said one Queens prosecutor who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely about the office.

Lower-level staffers are worried about the career consequences if they complain about COVID risks in the office, according to another prosecutor who also asked to remain anonymous.

“Some ADAs are concerned about being perceived to be difficult so they just go ahead with working in unsafe conditions,” the prosecutor said.

Several prosecutors in Queens have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, the Eagle has reported. Another four staff members tested positive on Sunday and Monday, Patch reported. 

Queens Patch 

 A prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney's Office reported testing positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday, an agency spokesperson confirmed to Patch.

News of the positive test largely spread to other staffers through word of mouth rather than formal channels, alarming some who say they believed they may have been exposed to that person but weren't notified by the office, according to two defense lawyers who spoke to multiple staffers about the COVID-19 case.

"Everyone else heard by rumor and were like, 'Were you going to tell us?'" one of the lawyers told Patch.

According to the sources, who asked that their names not be used because they fear retaliation against them and the staffers who confided in them, the Queens District Attorney's Office hasn't been forthcoming when it comes to information about COVID-19 cases among its ranks, leaving some staffers nervous about their health and safety.

Included in their concerns: Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who tested positive for COVID-19 in March, not wearing a mask while among other staffers indoors.

 

 

 

 

de Blasio's Citywide Administration Services allowed contractors to swindle the city during the start of the pandemic by sending the wrong face masks

 THE CITY 

 Last spring, frontline medical workers scrambled in vain to find proper surgical masks as the coronavirus swept through hospitals across the city.

Doctors, nurses and medical technicians were forced to reuse the same mask over and over — a dangerously ineffective method to stem infection from a virus that’s now taken the lives of more than 24,000 New Yorkers.

City officials jumped into action, signing more than $1 billion in emergency no-bid contracts with seemingly anybody who claimed they could produce high-quality masks and other crucial COVID gear — including ventilators.

Among them: Genuine Parts Company, an Atlanta-based firm that specializes in auto parts. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), which handles most of City Hall’s purchases, had bought parts for city vehicles from Genuine in the past.

An auto parts company from Atlanta?? Why? 

Go on...

According to internal records obtained by THE CITY, DCAS paid $348,000 for what was described by Genuine as 300,000 “non-Latex surgical masks” that were marked as “received” by the city on April 7. That was at the peak of the virus’ spread in New York City, when the seven-day average for daily hospitalizations hit 1,642, compared to this week’s 52.

 But records show that when DCAS’ Bureau of Quality Assurance inspected the delivered goods, workers discovered not surgical masks but “disposable single-use non-surgical mask/dust mask/Not FDA approved.”

The items were nevertheless deemed “accepted due to public necessity.” DCAS paid full price and placed subsequent orders for more masks from the car parts dealer, records show. DCAS then “redirected” the masks — useless in emergency rooms — elsewhere for non-medical use.

The Genuine mask purchase is part of a disturbing pattern uncovered during an investigation by THE CITY of DCAS’ pandemic-spurred emergency buying spree.

During some of the most dire weeks of the crisis, THE CITY found, the agency lost track of key equipment from masks to ventilators — driving an exasperated DCAS official to declare in one early May meeting: “Stop this s—t! Stop this s—t! Fix the problem!”

 And guess who also was involved in this honest incompetence graft? The Blaz's art dealer buddy Contractor Gadget

A similar scenario unfolded with another vendor, Digital Gadgets, an electronics firm whose CEO, Charlie Tebele, along with family members, has been a frequent donor to de Blasio’s various political campaigns.

In late March, DCAS awarded $19 million in no-bid contracts to Digital for high quality N95 masks and lower quality KN95 masks. That included an $8 million contract for what the firm promised would be two million “surgical grade N95s,” according to internal DCAS documents. 

 The company also won a $91 million contract to provide DCAS with ventilators that was later cancelled because, Benson told THE CITY, the agency “decided to order a different ventilator model.”

Digital Gadgets — which previously supplied hoverboards to QVC — did deliver masks. But DCAS records reveal that the agency’s Bureau of Quality Assurance discovered the masks Digital delivered were not “surgical grade N95s” as promised and had not been approved by either the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Cuomo's COVID comedy is not pretty

 

 Impunity City

Governor Andrew Cuomo  has been in quite a blue mood lately. Although it’s not over New York elected officials bipartisan calls and congressional and senate demands from DC calling for an independent investigation into the motives behind his mandate demanding nursing homes accept COVID19 patients and the immunity law he gave the owners and financial holders of them. It’s also not over the MTA’s running out of funding to maintain and operate the transit system to go along with maniacs breaking train windows for the fuck of it. It’s also not over the mass exodus of the state’s richest people from the big hollow apple and especially those he’s groveling to so they stay put…

No it’s all these young and youngish adults who are flouting the pandemic protocols he put in place back in April (which he did very late) that mandated mask wearing and social distancing while shopping indoors and mingling outside at bars and restaurants. Even though this consensus flouting as been going on since the outbreak began and reaching the tipping point in summer’s eve with people partying down on an Astoria street, Cuomo decided that the only way he could get the narrative through to these maskless party obsessive punks would be through, um, comedy.

Now Cuomo is the last person who should delve into this genre, although as his massive ego and megalomania plainly shows, it’s safe to say that he probably thinks he knows funny more than anyone else who happens to be in his surroundings. Even that COVID 19 mountain grave poster he commissioned to make and is selling now has little side jokes (the boyfriend cliff).

What’s truly interesting about Cuomo’s sudden interest in resorting to humor is that because of his emergency executive powers that Albany’s legislators gave him in order to prevent contagion to keep the curve going back up the mountain is that he won’t let people who are actually funny and rely on comedy for their livelihoods do their jobs...

 

How do you solve a problem like Astoria? You ignore it for a month.

Patch

 Crowds of people drinking and dining on the sidewalks of Astoria are drawing ire for flouting social distancing rules and forgoing masks.

The city's 311 hotline received dozens of complaints Friday and Saturday in the two ZIP codes that cover the main commercial drags of 30th Avenue and Broadway, a Patch data analysis found.

The Grand, at 37-01 30th Ave., was the subject of seven complaints Friday of loud music and customers not social distancing.

George Ballis, owner of The Grand, said he's tried asking the crowds to disperse — but that he gets a profanity-laced earful in return.

"I beg them like, guys, please, I don't want to get in trouble," Ballis said. "I understand that the local residents are upset, and I hear their frustration."

 Ballis said he's doing the most he can: He cleans and disinfects the restaurant weekly, makes his employees wear masks and has his bouncers try to get people moving.

"There's nothing that I can do to somebody when they're on a New York City sidewalk," he said. "All I can do is protect my staff."

Across the street from The Grand, partiers outside Blend Astoria racked up eight complaints Friday and Saturday of loud music and a lack of social distancing and face coverings. (Calls to Blend were twice put on hold indefinitely.)

Another three complaints listed 30th Avenue in general, where videos posted on social media showed crowds of maskless partiers on the sidewalk.

"People seem to forget we're in the middle of a pandemic," City Council Member Costa Constantinides said in a statement Sunday. "While I understand the need for people to get out and our small businesses to reopen, we all have a civic duty to continue to practice social distancing, wear a mask and keep others safe. Our healthcare system cannot take another shock from this virus."

This story was posted on June 14 2020 by Maya Kaufman.

Which was a week before Phase 2 that permitted restaurants to serve on tables outside.

Trump wears the mask

Wear a mask and show respect...by John Ciafone

Note how the first responder wears his PPE....

Also that yahoo email address just screams I'm a professional.

Just a reminder...

Thanks to NY Shitty for tweeting me this (wherever she got it from)

COVID-19 acclimation message found in Whitestone

Untapped Cities

Caption Chirlane de Blasio's first "campaign ad"

Bill de Blasio actually had this picture made for the news media and Gothamist to publish. Pathetic.

COVID-19's Contractor Gadget

THE CITY

City Hall’s frantic hunt for protective masks and medical equipment to combat coronavirus led officials to sign emergency contracts totaling nearly $119 million with a firm run by a major donor to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s failed presidential campaign.

Digital Gadgets LLC, a New Jersey-based wholesaler of hoverboards and other electronic devices to QVC and similar TV outlets, entered into three contracts with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services between March 25 and March 28, city contract records show.

The first payment of $9.1 million came the following Tuesday — representing 10% of a total $91 million agreed to for “procurement of respirators and breathing kits” through the end of June. One order of two million N95 masks comes at a price of $8 million, or $4 a mask.

The Digital Gadgets deal arrived in the midst of a bidding war among cities, states, and nations around the globe for personal protective gear and was well within range of prices on offer at the time.

Before March 25, Digital Gadgets had never appeared in the city comptroller’s decade-old CheckbookNYC tracking system.

Digital Gadgets’ website features a pop-up box: “If you are inquiring about our COVID-19 PPE please click on button below,” followed by an email address.

Company CEO Charlie Tebele and family members made donations totaling $32,000 to de Blasio’s now-abandoned campaign for the Democratic nomination for president and related political action committees, state and federal records show. Tebele and family members also contributed at least $12,750 to de Blasio’s 2017 reelection campaign.

Tebele, who owns a Manhattan townhouse residence on East 61st Street, and Digital Gadgets did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls from THE CITY.

de Blasio's an idiot savant. He may not know shit about preparing for a crisis and evidently leading a city during one, but his brain cells get energized the second an opportunity comes up to make sure anyone who gave him money immediately gets a cherry contract with the city.

Despicable