#Focus on jabs — not harmful mask mandates

Mayor Bill de Blasio just showed how his trouble with taking bold action can be a good thing: On Monday, he decided against reinstating a mask mandate, instead simply encouraging Gothamites to cover their faces indoors.

He had good reason not to act. A mask mandate might discourage dining and shopping, slowing the city’s already-anemic recovery. And it’s not necessary: Data indicate that while the Delta variant is the most contagious coronavirus yet, vaccination makes the risk of hospitalization and death from it nearly nonexistent.

Most important: Requiring even the vaxxed to mask up eliminates a major incentive to get jabbed in the first place, and increasing vax rates is the best way to keep COVID from doing deeper damage.

Blas had to make that last point repeatedly in his Monday press conference, as no fewer than four reporters asked him why he wouldn’t mandate masks, a decision they seemed to find inexplicable.

“Everything we’re doing is based on data and science, but it’s also based on strategy. The overwhelming strategic thrust is vaccination,” de Blasio explained. “We want to make clear mask-wearing is not a substitute for vaccination.”

That’s smart. And he added, “We want to make very clear the separation between all the good things, all the opportunity, all the positives that will be available to people who are vaccinated versus an increasingly more limited world for folks who are unvaccinated.”

His emphasis on promoting jabs is clear: He’s requiring all new employees to be vaccinated, a week after announcing that current workers will need either to have gotten jabbed or undergo weekly testing.

And he says he’s working to get more eligible kids vaxxed before they return to school, promising “mobile vaccination sites where kids are, at back-to-school shopping sites, at Summer Rising sites” and at athletic sites.

He might also focus on public-school employees. A week ago, the city estimated 60 percent of that workforce was vaccinated. Why isn’t it higher? Remember, teachers say they’re nervous about reopening classrooms with Delta surging.

Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz announced Monday that all 2,700 of her charter-school teachers and workers have gotten jabbed. The city must do better.