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Gov. Cuomo Now Demanding Businesses Restrict Service to Vaccinated Customers Only

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Don’t want to get the COVID-19 vaccine? That’s your choice, says Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — just don’t expect to enter any businesses.

During a Monday media briefing, the embattled New York governor beseeched private business owners to adopt “vaccine-only admission,” telling them the policy would be “in your business interest.”

According to CNBC, Cuomo’s comments came on the same day he mandated vaccines for employees of the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Port Authority. Those who refuse to comply will be subject to weekly testing.

“Private businesses — I am asking them and suggesting to them: Go to vaccine-only admission,” Cuomo said.

“We did this. Radio City Music Hall, months ago. Reopened, vaccine-only. Sold out all the shows. Sports arenas — they went up to about 90 percent vaccine-only.”

Most private businesses aren’t Radio City Music Hall or sports venues, however. While the target audience of Tuesday’s Radio City show “One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga” is a fairly limited one, the clientele of, say, a grocery store is a bit more broad.

If all businesses required vaccines for admission, it would be a de facto mandate.

“Private businesses, bars, restaurants — go to a vaccine-only admission,” Cuomo continued.

“I believe it’s in your business interest to run a vaccine-only establishment. … It’s going to help your business, not hurt it.”

“If you say to people, ‘Well, if you don’t have a vaccine, you can’t get into these establishments,’ then you’ll see a real incentive to get vaccinated,” Cuomo said.

Buffalo-area restaurant managers didn’t believe it would be in their business interest to run a “vaccine-only establishment.”

Todd Burdick, general manager of Jim’s Steakout, told Spectrum News his restaurant had been suffering “for over a year, through this whole pandemic.”

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“And if we go that route, there are certain people that don’t want to be vaccinated right now,” Burdick said. “That’s just going to take money away and it’s going to kill businesses.”

Burdick told Spectrum he didn’t think his business could afford to require vaccines.

“I think that if he recommends this and business owners go through with it, it’s probably going to take 33 percent to 40 percent of the business away,” he said.

So who exactly is expressing support for this?

The leftist social media hype team, which is back to embracing Cuomo after he went through a rough patch involving COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes and a spate of sexual harassment allegations.

We’ve been reliably informed that vaccines prevent serious illness from the delta variant and that the current uptick in COVID-19 cases is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” If these people are still worried, no one is stopping them from making decisions about their own health.

Instead, what they and Cuomo want to do is make decisions about other people’s health.

A private business is perfectly within its rights to refuse service to the unvaccinated. But it’s another issue entirely when a governor pushes private vaccine mandates from the bully pulpit in a tone that makes them seem like a bit more than a suggestion.

Nice restaurant, Cuomo seems to be saying. Good to see that it’s open again. It’d be a shame if anything were to… happen to it.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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