While visitors to New York City have been unable to get exemptions from the state’s quarantine requirements, celebrities from out of state have just been granted exemption in order to attend the upcoming MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), in yet another display of leftist hypocrisy.
Under rules from the New York State Department of Health, visitors to the state of New York are required to complete a form wherein they agree to self-quarantine, if they are coming from designated coronavirus hot zones, for 14 days or face heavy fines and up to 15 days in jail.
“All out-of-state travelers from designated states must complete the form upon entering New York,” the state’s health department travel guidance says. “Travelers who leave the airport without completing the form will be subject to a $2,000 fine and may be brought to a hearing and ordered to complete mandatory quarantine. Travelers coming to New York from designated states through other means of transport, including trains and cars, must fill out the form online.”
The Daily Wire adds the 14-day self-quarantine requirement includes separation from others in your home and ceasing all grocery trips.
“Do you consent to receive daily monitoring messages via text from the New York State Contact Tracing Program?” the form asks, in part.
Those who do not comply can be hit with fines as high as $10,000, with the possibility for jail time, according to the New York Post.
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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order outlines coronavirus hot zones as any state in which there is “a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents, or higher than a 10% test positivity rate, over a seven day rolling average.” The New York Post observes this would apply to more than 34 states, including California, from which many of the stars will be coming.
But the Department just granted celebrities who plan to attend the upcoming award show special exemptions from this requirement.
A spokesman for Governor Cuomo defended the exemption by claiming stars will “participate in the production of the show, but they will only interact with other members of the cast and crew and will quarantine when not working,” the Post reported.
The VMAs “agreed to police itself with ‘rigorous safety protocols including testing and screening and compliance checks by a special compliance officer,’” the Post added.
Meanwhile, non-celebrity travelers are subjected to what Staten Island City Councilman Joseph Borelli calls “unconstitutional breach[es] of authority” as New York City’s Sheriff’s Office has stopped more than 2,000 vehicles crossing the George Washington, Goethals, and Bayonne bridges, the Outerbridge Crossing, and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels to question whether people have spent extended time in a restricted state. If they answer in the affirmative, they are also told to complete the required traveler health form and required to self-quarantine for 14 days.
“States are added and taken off the (restricted) list a week later. No reasonable person can plan their life around Cuomo’s whims and [Mayor Bill] de Blasio’s desperation,” Borelli opined.
Of course, this is not the first time Cuomo and de Blasio have made exceptions for a privileged class of individuals.
In May, Governor Cuomo spoke out against the protesters who demanded an end to the coronavirus lockdowns, declaring at a news conference, “You have no right to jeopardize my health … and my children’s health and your children’s health.” He fined business owners who attempted to reopen in violation of his orders.
But when the George Floyd protests erupted at the end of May, he changed his tune on peaceful assembly, even as those protests were anything but peaceful.
“Nobody is sanctioning the arson, and the thuggery and the burglaries, but the protesters and the anger and the fear and the frustration? Yes. Yes, and the demand is for justice,” he said.
Similarly, Mayor de Blasio said nothing of the George Floyd protests, despite the protesters largely ignoring social-distancing rules, as reported by the New York Post, but prohibited public protests advocating for the city to be reopened at a press briefing in early May.
“I don’t care if it’s 20 people or a hundred people or a thousand people, it’s not going to be allowed. So the point is, if you gather, NYPD is coming there to give you a summons and if you resist, to arrest you, period, across all communities,” de Blasio said in reference to nine people protesting outside of City Hall on May 9 to push for an end to the coronavirus lockdowns.
On May 29, however, in an appearance on WNYC radio’s The Brian Lehrer Show, de Blasio not only okayed the George Floyd protests, but asked the police to use a “light touch” when handling the protesters because they were “undeniably angry for a reason.”
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Raven Clabough acquired her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English at the University of Albany in upstate New York. She currently lives in Pennsylvania and has been a writer for The New American since 2010.
