NYC Mayor Won’t Lift Vax Mandate to Get Kyrie on the Court

CLAY: Buck, it’s possible that I’m gonna be able to come up to New York City again at some point soon as New York City is basically planning to do away with the mask mandates and the covid vaccine mandates. But there’s one absurdity here that deserves to be talked about because it still points to how crazy many of these rules are. Kyrie Irving refused to get vaccinated.

He’s a player for the Brooklyn Nets team, and he now, under the new New York City rules, is still not going to be able to play in games in New York City, but he can sit courtside and watch them — and also, any player who’s unvaccinated that travels to New York City can play in games. Eric Adams got asked about this absurdity, the new mayor of New York City, and he had this to say.

ADAMS: Listen, I want Kyrie on the court. You know, I will do anything to get that ring. So badly I want… I want it. But it’s so much at stake here. And, you know, I (sputters) spoke with the owner of the team. We want to find a way to get Kyrie on the court, but this is a big issue. And it would send wrong message to have an exception for one player when we’re telling countless number of New York City employees: If you don’t follow the rules, you won’t be able to be employed.

BUCK: This is about punishing those who don’t comply, obviously, right?

CLAY: Yes. And there’s no at this point health requirement, right, because you think about this. Again, he can sit courtside, eat popcorn, have a soda, have a beer, no issue. And this is about still trying to punish people over whether or not they got the vaccine.

BUCK: I’ve seen videos of high school, junior high kids in places like New York playing basketball and then they all mask up when they sit on the bench.

CLAY: Yeah. Yes.

BUCK: But when they’re actually right up against each other playing the game, breathing, and their spit flying everywhere, everything else. No masks. It’s not about the science. I mean, people have been, like, “How did I know that masks did work? How did we know that masks weren’t gonna do anything?”

One of the easiest ways was that early on, Clay, we would talk about actual human usage versus theoretical laboratory testing. Human usage of a mask, which he’s all know ’cause we’ve had to wear these stupid things for two years is, pull it up, pull it down, move turnover, put it on, take it off. That is… Imagine I sent you into a room with mustard gas and said, “Take your gas mask off, breathe a few times, put it back on, take it off.”

You’ll say, “Well, I’m on getting the exposed to the gas.” Nobody… It was impossible the argument that they were making, impossibly stupid arguments. It was like the people on the airplanes. Remember the airline attendants used to tell you to put your Kindle away because it was an electronic device? There was a time when you couldn’t have a Kindle in your hand because it constituted —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — it might create… I was like, if this electronic interference with cash or interfere with this plane in any way, we are all gonna die.

CLAY: We’re in trouble.

BUCK: There’d be planes falling out of the sky all the time. They finally got rid of that ’cause it was too stupid. But this is where we’ve gone now, Clay. They’re clinging to the things that are so dumb that no serious person can believe them. Like this policy with Kyrie Irving.

CLAY: Like the Kyrie Irving and even crazier, kids, right? Anybody who’s ever watched a kid, the idea that kids wearing masks were gonna somehow protect people inside of schools was laughably absurd.

BUCK: Hey, Fauci needs some PR these days. He needs some… He hasn’t had any reps on TV or radio. Maybe he should be come on. He could explain to me how mask up between bites is scientific, the evil little tyrant.