Back to Normal, Just Like That?

Four months ago I wrote about the injustice of venues like Delaware Art Museum demanding their patrons receive an unapproved pharmaceutical product into their bodies that could never be removed.

Dear Delaware Art Museum,

Almost everyone is dropping these requirements now: the State of Delaware, Philly, museums, concert venues, etc. They coerced permanent health decisions upon their community and didn’t have the fortitude to last half a year in their resolve.

The public deserves assurances that we can trust these institutions to not be prey to the media’s winds of change. We deserve to hear how decisions of this magnitude will be made in the future. We deserve to have some knowledge of the process by which businesses, governments, and public spaces will again consider bullying the people they claim to serve.

I’m going to my first concert in two years tonight. When I bought my tickets there was no vax mandate, then there was, then there wasn’t. All of this in a few months. They wouldn’t refund my money when they changed the terms of the sale, so I will not be likely to trust them with my funds again. Same goes for Delaware Art Museum and all the places that chased a media narrative instead of making careful determinations as to whether they had the right to ask their patrons for this irreversible condition.

I lived happily without concerts for these two years. Living without museums was harder, but there are still many who did not press upon the health decisions of their visitors.

My priorities are clearer now, I know what I can do without. I’m prepared to withhold my support until I can feel trust towards the places that did not trust me to make my own health decisions.