Over before it started.

 Well that didn't last long. 

Twin Cities Mayors Melvin Carter and Jacob Frey jointly rescinded their vaccine-or-test emergency regulations for restaurants, bars and entertainment venues, effective immediately, as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rapidly decline.

Mask mandates for city-licensed businesses will stay in place for now.

"We always want to try and be as least invasive as possible when we're coming from a public health perspective," said Minneapolis interim Health Commissioner Heidi Ritchie in an interview. "We felt like in the areas where there were people who were eating and drinking and they couldn't feasibly wear a mask, that vaccination was really the best way to keep everybody safe. At this point with the transmission rates dropping the way that they are, the hospitalization rates not as precarious as they were, we're comfortable pulling that more invasive regulation backwards."

The Twin Cities have been closely monitoring new case rates, positivity rates, vaccination rates, hospital capacity and vaccine breakthrough cases since announcing the vaccine-or-test mandates last month.

This mandate was a fool's errand from the outset. Given the rate of breakthrough cases involving Omicron, it was highly plausible that a fully vaccinated and boosted customer was also very contagious with that strain of COVID. However, if they were willing to show their vax card, it was all good, even if they looked like warmed over death. This also put an establishment's employees in an awkward position of having to insist on seeing paperwork upon entry. If said employees were told by patrons to pound sand, what were the repercussions? Was law enforcement called? Heck, in Minneapolis they don't even respond to gun shots in a timely manner. 

This saga also emphasizes the perils of elected officials having no concept of what it takes to run a business. When restaurants/bars place orders for supplies, they do so in anticipating what business will potentially look like in the weeks ahead. When this mandate was handed down in mid-January, restaurants and bars were given literally one week to prepare. This is after they had likely stocked up on supplies for the upcoming 2-3 weeks only to be hit with the reality that much of what they purchased would go unused. Not only that, some employees would have to be jettisoned due to the inevitable downturn in patronage. 

While it's good news that the rescission of this mandate is effective immediately, this also poses issues for bars and restaurants. Management has to scrounge up staff for what will be a sudden influx of business returning. Regardless, I guess that's a more palatable problem than trying to keep businesses in MSP (those that are even still standing) afloat. So....uh.....thanks, Mayors?

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