Will today be the day NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio orders its citizens to wear masks indoors even if you have been vaccinated, as I wrote on Friday?

Perhaps the mayor will have to deal with the 18 shootings over the weekend on the streets of the city in his daily press briefing and put off the mask mandate for tomorrow.

An NYPD lieutenant was shot in the ankle over the weekend after a suspect with at least 25 prior arrests, including eight felonies and 17 misdemeanors was apprehended with a firearm in The Bronx.

As I wrote on Friday, masking people again despite them getting the jab is not the answer. The city needs to get poorer communities vaccinated.

If city and state employees can be ordered to get the vaccine or subject to weekly testing, then why can’t the city mandate that people receiving government benefits have to do the same?

Let’s also cite that the new CDC advisory on masks and distancing comes from a highly skeptical study in India, which does not administer the same vaccines as here in America. They use the AstraZeneca jab, which is not accredited to use here.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden — echoing de Blasio’s earlier mandate — ordered all federal employees to either be vaccinated or face weekly testing. Biden also said he was in favor of paying people for taking the shot like we are doing here in New York.

The demographics in New York tell us that the least vaccinated zip codes with the most new cases are centered around poorer minority neighborhoods. Traditionally these areas are Democratic strongholds.

If you want to see these neighborhoods get vaccinated, then you need to say, “Get vaccinated or face weekly testing or you lose all your government benefits.” That will bring these neighborhoods up to the city’s roughly 70% vaccinated rate and certainly reduce the hospitalization rate.