Caption New York City's doctor

Delta Blazlooza

  

NY Daily News

Hizzoner is in the mood for a party — COVID-19 be damned.

Mayor de Blasio announced Thursday that the city will host five large-scale concerts next month and urged people from near and far to flock to the Big Apple for the “unforgettable” events — even though New York is in the midst of a troubling uptick in coronavirus cases due to the delta variant.

The five free concerts, one in each borough, will take place during the week starting Aug. 16, culminating in a previously announced Aug. 21 gig on the Great Lawn in Central Park, because “we got to celebrate our recovery,” de Blasio said at City Hall.

“I am issuing a FOMO alert,” he said, using the “Fear of Missing Out” acronym popular with younger generations. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life saying, ‘oh my god I missed it,’ you should get to New York City in the month of August, where amazing things will be happening.”

The Aug. 21 performance will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Jennifer Hudson, among others. Acts for the other four shows are forthcoming, as well as ticket details, but these are the basics:

• Aug. 16: Orchard Beach, the Bronx
• Aug. 17: Richmond County Bank Park, Staten Island
• Aug. 19: Brooklyn Army Terminal, Brooklyn
• Aug. 20: Forest Hills Stadium, Queens

The party-hungry mayor compared the bashes to the legendary Woodstock festival of 1969.

“I’ve talked to people who missed Woodstock. My own oldest brother could’ve gone to Woodstock,” he said. “Don’t let that FOMO thing happen to you. This is going to be amazing.”

But underpinning the plans for the party week of the century is New York’s steady rise in coronavirus infections.

The city’s test positivity rate — which provides a glimpse of COVID’s pervasiveness — cracked 2% for the first time in over two months Thursday, with 644 new infections and 98 new hospitalizations reported by the Health Department.

For context, the city last year operated under the assumption that the pandemic was under control only when daily reported infections did not exceed 550.

Still, de Blasio has rejected calls from a growing chorus of public health experts and lawmakers to reinstate indoor mask mandates and slow down other relaxations of pandemic restrictions.

Instead, the mayor has argued the focus should be squarely on jacking up vaccination rates — a sentiment he reiterated when asked by the Daily News during Thursday’s briefing if he’s sending a dangerous message by calling for a pilgrimage to the city for next month’s “homecoming week” concerts.

“If they think the solution is for everyone to go home and not participate in recovery and allow ourselves to slip backwards into the world we were in — yeah, if that’s an option people want, I want to see that they have their head examined,” he said. “I mean this is crazy, get vaccinated ... We’re not going to cower.”

Andrew Yang is an idiot

 

 

 Gothamist

 For former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who entered the New York City mayor’s race as a frontrunner in January, this week brought into sharp relief some yawning gaps between what he knows and what he doesn’t about the basic functioning of New York City.

On Thursday, flanked by former NYPD officer Edwin Raymond, who’s running for City Council, Yang was asked by NY Post reporter Julia Marsh if he supported the repeal of 50-a, the long-standing law that shielded police discipline records from public view. State legislatures repealed the law last year, amid massive public demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd.

 “The repeal of 50-a,” Yang repeated, blankly. “Do you know what 50-a is?” Marsh prodded. “This is not the, it’s not the mandatory interview of the…” Raymond tried to push Yang towards the right subject area, muttering under his breath, “the records, the disciplinary records.” At which point Yang finally arrived — “Um, I think we should get more transparency in terms of police officers and their records.”

Earlier on Thursday, at a taped forum on the future of homelessness sponsored by WIN, the largest provider of shelter and supportive housing for homeless families in the city, Yang said it would be “extraordinarily helpful” for the city to have shelters specifically for victims of domestic violence. The event was moderated by Spectrum NY1 reporter Courtney Gross who noted, “There are already a number of domestic violence shelters... They do already exist.”

Yang walked back his statements, his eyes darting to the right of his zoom screen, insisting he’d meant that there wasn’t enough capacity at such facilities.

 “There are. Oh no, I, of course they do exist, so that’s one aspect of something we should be increasing capacity of,” he said, pivoting to talk about the need for more beds in psychiatric facilities. “There are a lot of things we should be increasing capacity of.”

As of last year, the city had 2,500 emergency beds for survivors of domestic violence and about 800 families are housed in the system on any given day, according to city figures.

 Yang sat down with Gothamist / WNYC shortly after that press conference in Brooklyn Thursday and said running for mayor “has been a blast” and he’s learned so much about New York City in the process. He said his campaign has put out over 80 pages of policy that present a clear vision for the city but, he stressed, he doesn’t think people in government have all the answers.

“My goal as mayor will be to take the work that oftentimes others are doing and then augment it and amplify it. I'm not someone who thinks the government is going to have all of the answers or even most of the answers,” Yang explained. “I feel like oftentimes, especially in a place like New York, they'll be some nonprofit organization or activist group that is tackling it and has been working on it for years that you can build on and learn from.”

Update:

Yang actually passed the buck when asked and stumped on what his favorite Jay Z song was.

i asked new york mayoral candidate andrew yang what his favorite jay z song is pic.twitter.com/UV8tQJXta1

— ziwe (@ziwe) May 22, 2021

To paraphrase legendary Queensbridge rapper MC Shan, Yang needs to "kill that noise" with his campaign.

The Blaz: "Why so serious?"

 

NY Daily News 

 Hizzoner has been in such a good mood recently, he’s been making numerous wisecracks and puns at public appearances.

The attempts at showmanship make for a strong contrast with his mood at events through the end of last year, when New Yorkers were wondering whether the COVID-19 pandemic was spiraling out of control.

But with a historic vaccination campaign underway and infection numbers down, Mayor de Blasio has been on much more jovial.

In his latest gag during a briefing, he cut to a video feed from the Shack Shake in Madison Square Park in Manhattan, where the chain’s CEO Randy Garutti touted an offer of free burgers and fries for people who get vaccinated.

By the time the video jumped back to the mayor in City Hall’s stately Blue Room, he had a Shake Shack meal in front of him.

“Did you say free fries when you get vaccinated?” he said playfully before he stuffed a handful in his mouth. “I got vaccinated.

“You’re saying I can get this — delicious fries — wait a minute, but there’s also a burger element to this?” de Blasio said with a mischievous smile.

“If this is appealing to you, just think of this when you think of vaccination,” he said before chomping down. “Mmm, vaccination! I’m getting a very good feeling about vaccination right this moment.”

The silly streak comes with just over seven months left in the de Blasio administration. During the mayor’s tenure, headlines have been dominated by the scandal over the Campaign for One New York — his nonprofit that nearly got him indicted — his humiliating 2020 presidential run and the coronavirus pandemic.

None of that made for an atmosphere of levity at City Hall and Gracie Mansion.

But with COVID-19 numbers improving, the mayor has been promoting the coming months as the “Summer of New York City,” expressing a love of the Big Apple long absent from his administration, according to his critics.

It probably doesn’t hurt that Hizzoner’s main nemesis, Gov. Cuomo, has been reeling from scandals over allegations of sexual misconduct and his handling of coronavirus deaths at nursing homes.

Asked why he’s been so upbeat at a recent press conference, de Blasio shied away from mentioning his arch-rival’s crises.

“There’s a lot of good stuff happening and a lot of people are working together. Those are the kinds of things that make me happy,” he said on April 22.

Admin note:

What I really like about this Daily News article is how it's similar to my post about how the Blaz and his media management monkeys have been slicing up their press briefing uploads, cutting out reporters questions and also the responses by the Mayor and his health commissioner. Which they did again in the most recent video where the joke from Park Slope was scarfing down fries and a burger like a degenerate slob. Most of all, I appreciate the Daily News for posting those briefings in full, because while I am still deplatformed on Twitter, I bombed the hell out of the comments section on those videos, so my voice will still be heard by the masses. (Well, maybe hundreds) Ciao, baby.

Caption the Mayor of Shake Shack

 A very special extra caption Friday courtesy of the shamelessly shilling dope from Park Slope

 

This awful man is mocking every real New Yorker right now.

de Blasio cares more about unvaccinated tourists than unvaccinated constituents

 

NY Post

A hotdog from Coney Island, an “I heart NY” T-shirt from Times Square… and a COVID-19 vaccine from the Department of Health. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to make a jab in the arm the Big Apple’s next great souvenir — by offering the coronavirus vaccine to tourists, he announced Thursday. But the state would need to approve the idea.

“This summer you’re going to see tourism come alive again in New York City,” de Blasio said during a City Hall press briefing. “We want to go the extra mile, make it easy for tourists, if they’re here, get vaccinated while you’re here.”

The de Blasio administration is hoping to set up mobile immunization sites at popular destinations around the city like Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Central Park, and the High Line in order to get out-of-towners inoculated against COVID-19 with Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine, Hizzoner said.

“It makes sense to put mobile vaccination sites where the tourists are,” de Blasio said. “That is good for all of us that they get vaccinated. It’s good for them, it’s another reason to be here and know you’re going to be taken care of.”

I guess it hasn't dawned on this idiot at all that people from other states and nations might have got their shots where they are from. This might work with visitors from India, but they are sort of not allowed to come here right now. Maybe send these mobile vac sites to people that are here now.

Mayor de Blasio stupidly breaks CDC protocol by wrongly advising woman about coronavirus

NY Post

Mayor Bill de Blasio directly contradicted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on Wednesday when he gave a woman who’d recently returned from coronavirus-ridden Italy bad advice on when to self-isolate.

Hizzoner dished out the dubious tip while fielding a call at a 311 center in Lower Manhattan, as reporters looked on.

“No symptoms of any kind?” de Blasio asked the unidentified caller, who had recently come back from a trip to Europe’s hardest-hit nation but not shown any signs of sickness. “If you experience any symptoms at any moment, at that time adjust your approach.

“The important thing is to really be sensitive that if anything changes at all stay home immediately.”
The CDC, however, advises that anyone returning stateside from Italy self-isolate for two weeks — regardless of whether they’re symptomatic.

“Stay home for 14 days from the time you left Italy and practice social distancing,” the agency writes on its website.

City Hall admitted de Blasio was wrong and said it had reached out to the caller to give her the right information, following an inquiry from The Post.

“The mayor misspoke,” spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said. “If you return from Italy you should self-quarantine regardless of symptoms. We have made contact with the caller and clarified and the mayor will be issuing a clarification, as well.”