When is New York City’s COVIDiocy going to end? 

The latest, utterly deranged ploy from our public-health alarmists is legislation dreamed up by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, aimed at laying down onerous new ventilation rules for indoor spaces. 

This is “critical to protecting us long-term from this virus, from future waves and similar transmissible diseases,” says Levine. 

Bull. Adding dozens of pages to the city’s regulatory codes will do nothing except impose massive costs (including on taxpayers) for retrofitting ventilation systems or building new ones and offer yet another opportunity for contractors and consultants already cozy with the city to rake in big bucks. 

And it’s scant promise to protect us in the slightest from “future waves” of COVID or any other disease. The city’s own data show that COVID is getting successively less deadly here. Why? Not thanks to better fans and filters, but because more people are getting vaccinated, more people have immunity from previous infections and the virus is evolving to be ever-less deadly. 

Plus, there’s no reason to bet big that the next pandemic bug (if there is one; the last was a century ago) will be airborne in the same way COVID is.

The idea that more rules and buckets of money are urgently needed for New York City to finally defeat COVID is as dangerous as it is nonsensical. The bug is beaten already; only fear (and hype from Levine and others who hope to profit off it) remains.

It’s deeply irresponsible for a public official to argue for anything other than increased vaccine uptake, common-sense policies like staying home if sick and narrowly focused protections for the elderly and immunocompromised. 

Yet “irresponsible” is a Levine trademark: Back in February 2020, he implied that worrying at all about COVID was racist, calling concerns “fear mongering” in a tweet summoning people to Chinatown. Weeks later, he flipped to COVID hysteria. 

COVID alarmism is driven by politics, not science. It continues in the city’s cruel toddler-masking mandate and the still-hanging talk of a return to restrictions. 

New York’s most vulnerable have borne the cost of this insanity for two years, yet must keep on suffering until those in power, like Levine, stop peddling nonsense.