Boston’s new mayor, Michelle Wu, took the city by surprise yesterday when she announced that Beantown’s requirement for proof of vaccination to enter most indoor businesses was being lifted “immediately.” This was particularly good news for bars and restaurants in the city which have struggled to enforce the mandate and seen their customer traffic (and profits) tanking over the course of the pandemic. The reason she gave was yet another “following the science” speech, noting that the city’s positivity, hospitalization, and ICU occupancy rates had all fallen below the previously defined limits. Since that means that even the unvaccinated will now be able to go about their lives a bit more normally, Wu really should answer one pressing question. What about all of the people who wound up getting vaccinated against their will? (CBS Boston)

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has lifted the proof of vaccine requirement for indoor businesses effective immediately. The announcement was made Friday evening.

The city just fell below the third metric it needed to hit in order to loosen the restrictions.

Public health data reported on Friday shows Boston has a 4.0% community positivity rate; 90.7% occupancy rate of adult ICU beds, and a 7-day average of adult COVID-19 hospitalizations at 195.9 per day.

At the Boston restaurant Sonsie, the manager went out front and took down the mandate poster that had been in the window for more than a year. She also informed her staff to stop asking to see immunity passports “immediately.”

The one thing that didn’t change on Friday night was the city’s face mask mandate. Officials said they will be reviewing that policy “in the coming days.” Of course, as we’ve discussed here previously, a mask mandate in a bar or restaurant is nothing more than idiotic posturing and virtue signaling. Customers take off their masks as soon as their beverages and food arrive at the table, so the only people being punished are the employees.

Returning to the question I posed at the top of the article, this ending of vaccination mandates is taking place all over the country now. Those who refused to accept the vaccines will now finally be allowed to mix with the rest of the public like normal human beings. But what of all of the people who didn’t want to be vaccinated but gave in and took the shots just to gain some measure of freedom of movement or keep their jobs? They can’t turn around now and be “de-vaccinated.”

The latest numbers from the CDC tell us that 64.4% of the people in the United States are now “fully vaccinated.” (That means three shots at this point for all but the hangers-on who waited until the last possible moment.) So more than a third of the country – including a majority of young children – are only partially done with getting their shots or are entirely unvaccinated. They will get to return to whatever passes for “normal” these days while those who took the shots against their will carry their lingering resentment of the government mandates with them.

If you weren’t paying attention to the politics involved, you might be surprised at how quickly we went from “the mandates are the only thing that will save us” to “never mind.” But that’s because all of these politicians are able to read their own polling numbers and those numbers look like a dumpster fire at the moment when it comes to COVID mandates. These are political decisions far more than medical decisions. And at least some of these officials are going to be held accountable later this year.