UPDATE: NY Governor Kathy Hochul said on CNN last night that she is considering a ban on masks.
This is absolutely shameful! New York has suffered so much from COVID, and COVID is not over. We should be normalizing and depoliticizing masks, not banning them.
After all NY suffered in the pandemic - they want to take away one of the few individual actions a person can take to make being in public safer bc they are mad people are protesting the war in Gaza. Unfuckingbelievable.
With the speed they moved, and the adamant way in NC they fought medical exemptions, I think these laws were already in the works.
I suspect it is the difficulty employers have with wanting to force workers to unmask without risking headlines.
No public/employee outcry if the government does it.
The employers were quiet for three years and just suddenly all want action now. No. Hochul said herself this was in response to the protests. As did NC.
There’s a long tradition of conservatives crafting laws in advance then using a crisis as a pretext to pass them.
The sheer unwillingness of the NC GOP to budge on health exemptions for the workplace says this might be one of those.
