MINNEAPOLIS (LifeSiteNews) — The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul will no longer require people to show their proof of inoculation to enter bars, restaurants, and ticketed events.
The mayors of the Twin Cities rescinded their complementary vaccine passports effective February 10, after imposing them on January 19. However, businesses may still prohibit individuals from entering their premises unless they have taken a negative COVID test or show proof of inoculation.
The policies differed slightly — St. Paul’s test-or-jab mandate applied to all licensed businesses while Minneapolis’ applied to “all places where people can eat and drink, including stadiums and movie theaters,” a CBS affiliate reported.
“The end of the requirement comes as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are trending downward, with current CDC data for Ramsey County over the past 7 days showing a 57.8% drop in cases, and a 37.89% decline in new hospital admissions,” a joint news release on January 10 said.
“We are grateful to be in a different place now than we were when this requirement first took effect,” St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said. “While I encourage residents to continue to get vaccinated, wear masks, and practice social distancing while indoors, the sharp decline in cases and hospitalizations means we can safely lift the vaccine requirement in our city.”
“Key public health metrics are trending in the right direction,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. “That is a welcomed sign for Minneapolis, especially for the small businesses and restaurants that have shouldered the weight of this pandemic. Let’s hold the momentum and bring our city back in full by continuing to follow public health guidance and supporting local businesses.”
Carter set St. Paul’s mandate to end in 40 days originally, but Frey left the requirement open until the end of the omicron surge.
Vaccine mandates used to shame people
Political leaders and commentators in other cities have been outspoken that vaccine mandates are meant to shame people into getting vaccinated.
“To put it simply, if you have been living vaccine-free, your time is up. If you wish to live life as w/the ease to do the things you love, you must be vax’d,” Chicago’s leftist Mayor Lori Lightfoot wrote when announcing the city’s inoculation requirement to enter most public places. “This health order may pose an inconvenience to the unvaccinated, and in fact it is inconvenient by design.”
The news site for liberal Oak Park, which borders Chicago, said it favors “segregating” people based on jab status. The editorial board said people are “deranged” if they choose not to get injected. Cook County, which includes Oak Park and Chicago, issued its own vaccine passport soon after Chicago did.
“Rational people have taken this proactive, life-affirming step [getting jabbed],” the editorial board of the Wednesday Journal said in a January 4 piece. Vaccine mandates are necessary to keep the “irrational minority” from harming others, the board argued, even though the purpose of the shot is ostensibly to protect the person who took it from getting the virus.
People who choose not to get jabbed “have turned a worldwide pandemic into some sort of political proving ground for the deranged.”
“Segregating those people from the rest of us so that we can move toward some changed sense of normal life — breakfast at Louie’s, lunch at George’s, dinner at Lou Malnati’s — makes perfect sense,” the editorial board wrote. “We have no second thoughts on this. We have no sympathy for the unvaccinated. Actually, we have contempt for them, and we don’t want them sitting near us coughing on our popcorn at the Lake Theatre.”
Yet even those who have taken two doses of the COVID shots are not protected against omicron.
“Two doses of COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to protect against infection by Omicron,” a paper by University of Toronto and University of Ottawa researchers said. “A third dose provides some protection in the immediate term, but substantially less than against Delta.”