Neurotic politicians like Mark Levine, chairman of the City Council’s Health Committee, whip people into a tizzy and demand a return to masking. Levine — who in February 2020 urged Gothamites to join the huge crowds in Chinatown celebrating the Lunar New Year in a “powerful show of defiance of the #coronavirus scare” — has also talked down the idea of school openings and repeatedly pressed for keeping restaurants and other small businesses closed.
Levine hasn’t missed a single paycheck during the 16 months we’ve spent in various stages of lockdown.
The hysteria has consequences. Laptop-class workers don’t suffer, of course, as big tech firms delay reopening their offices. But all the small businesses that support the big businesses in Silicon Alley suffer.
It’s the restaurants that rely on business lunches, the shoe shiners, drycleaners and parking-lot attendants who pay the price of laptop-class hysteria on both coasts.
The pajama-wearers, as I’ve written in these pages, can always type away from their couches. They collect their checks, feeling superior for having fought the pandemic just by staying home. They love to conspicuously obey the latest public-health directives, however irrational, and they can afford to do so.
Levine hasn’t missed a single paycheck during the 16 months we’ve spent in various stages of lockdown.
The hysteria has consequences. Laptop-class workers don’t suffer, of course, as big tech firms delay reopening their offices. But all the small businesses that support the big businesses in Silicon Alley suffer.
It’s the restaurants that rely on business lunches, the shoe shiners, drycleaners and parking-lot attendants who pay the price of laptop-class hysteria on both coasts.
The pajama-wearers, as I’ve written in these pages, can always type away from their couches. They collect their checks, feeling superior for having fought the pandemic just by staying home. They love to conspicuously obey the latest public-health directives, however irrational, and they can afford to do so.
‘Delta’ hysteria is another hammer blow to already flattened small businesses
The Delta variant is circulating, cases are up. But with three vaccines on the market, and nearly 60 percent of eligible Americans fully vaccinated, the picture is much brighter than the breathless…
nypost.com