The nation’s capital is finally dropping its vaccine and mask mandates…mostly.

DC mayor Muriel Bowser reluctantly followed the science and ended the vaccine requirement for the district’s businesses effective Tuesday — rendering the city’s “get the vax to see the acts” campaign null and void. The decision to require proof of vaccination now falls to individual businesses in the city — a civil rights victory, surely, given that just under a quarter of DC’s black residents remain unvaccinated.

Bowser’s move comes after a lengthy battle with venues such as The Big Board on H Street, which had its license suspended by the ABC Board earlier this month for refusing to enforce the mandate. According to the Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan, The Big Board “may request that the ABC Board modify” the bar’s suspension.

Mayor Bowser — who was pictured maskless indoors at a DC wedding during the city’s last mask mandate — also announced that the current mask mandate will allowed to expire on March 1. This means masks will not be required at:

• Restaurants and bars
• Sports and entertainment venues
• Gyms, recreation centers and indoor athletic facilities
• Houses of worship
• Businesses
• Grocery stores and pharmacies
• Retail establishments
• DC Government offices/areas with no public interaction

Freedom-loving Washingtonians can’t claim a complete victory, though: masks will still be required at “any private business that wants to require use of masks by its employees or customers,” as well as schools, daycares, dorms, taxis and on public transportation.

So your kids will still have to go the mental health side effects of not seeing their classmates’ and teachers’ faces, despite the minimal risk Omicron poses to them. Your Uber chauffeur is still hemmed into a two-tier social structure where the servants must be gagged. And when you board your delayed, old DC Metro — now running once every twenty-four minutes! — you’ll have to don a face-diaper while doing so.

The District follows in the footsteps of a number of other blue states that lifted their mandates last week. It also follows days of anti-mandate protests north of the border in Canada and a Super Bowl broadcast in which throngs of celebrities were spotted flouting the mask mandate in Los Angeles. A coincidence, Cockburn is sure.

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