The mask wars are starting up in New York City again, except this time the city government is asking you to take your masks off. No, I’m not making this up.
Worries about the safety of New York City’s deli clerks and bodega workers have Mayor Eric Adams making an unusual request: Members of the public should lower their face masks to reassure store workers they’re not criminals, Adams and other city leaders said on Monday.
“We are putting out a clear call to all of our shops, do not allow people to enter the store without taking off their face mask,” Adams said in an interview with radio station 1010 WINS.
“Once they’re inside, they can continue to wear it if they so desire to do so,” Adams said of the policy.
…And in a town famous for its no-nonsense culture, questions immediately popped up about the wisdom of putting yet another onus on store workers — and whether armed criminals would follow new rules about masks. Some people also wondered if forcing those with compromised immune systems to remove their masks indoors might itself break the law.
As discussed on today’s Three Martini Lunch, my feeling towards this is similar to my feeling during the time period when you were required to wear a mask in an airport under Federal Aviation Administration, but also simultaneously required to briefly remove your mask, so that the Transportation Security Administration officers could check your ID. I guess the plan is to just hope no one with Covid exhales or coughs during that brief period.
Unsurprisingly, New Yorkers who concluded that wearing a mask was a matter of life or death will not eagerly take off their masks. Then again, it’s like that some people’s mask-compliance was driven by a desire to be the best at following the rules. This is only a mayoral request of citizens, but it’s not hard to see a movement pushing for a regulation requiring people to take off their masks in stores as an anti-crime initiative.
I wonder if there are any vehement anti-maskers out there who so instinctively anti-authority that they will now refuse to take off their masks in shops. Or whether anti-maskers will enjoy the shoe being on the other foot, and start enforcing the mayor’s request to other mask-wearing New Yorkers.