That's the world's smallest violin, I mean cello, playing for you, Claudio Ronco

I haven't tested it out quite yet - I'm pretty much hunkered down for the next few weeks, hoping that omicron peaks and things ease up to where they were last fall - but as of last week, you can no longer go into a restaurant in Boston without showing your vaccination card (or a QR code you can download to your phone based on your vax status). There are other venues covered by this new rule, as well. (Gyms, theaters, museums, pools...)

I know, I know, vaccinated people can catch (and spread) covid, but we're just not the Typhoid Marys that the unvaccinated are. 

Anyway, I'm all for this new initiative. Our hospitals are filling up with (mostly) non-vaccinated covid patients, who are crowding out those who are in need of procedures and surgeries that are not deemed to be immediately necessary. This includes some procedures for cancer, where a tumor, say, is growing at a slow enough rate that a patient can wait. Sure, it may not kill you to hold off a bit, but how'd you like to have cancer and have to postpone treatment because some clowns who have refused to be vaccinated are clogging things up.

Boston's vaccination rates  - first dose and fully-vaxxed - are quite a bit higher than the U.S. averages. But they're not high enough. 

I hope this latest will get more people off the dime.

Like most rational folks, I'm fed up with the aginners prolonging things. I don't think we'll ever be entirely rid of covid, but I'm looking forward to having a new normal that's more normal than new. If we have to wear masks on public transportation, or in the grocery store: FINE. In fact, I may well keep wearing a mask in crowded, public, indoor places. 

Why not? Beats catching covid, even if I do end up with a mild case.

There are more stringent rules in force in other places. 

Take Italy, where you pretty much need a Green Pass (attesting that you're vaccinated) to get around. (Like a number of countries, Italy has removed the "be vaccinated or show a recent negative test' option.)

And this has gotten in the way of getting around for cellst Claudio Ronco. He uesed to perform all over Europe: 

...but now he can’t even board a plane. He can’t check into a hotel, eat at restaurant or get a coffee at a bar. Most important, he can’t use the water taxis needed to get around Venice, his home for 30 years — a loss of mobility that recently prompted him to gather up two of his prized cellos, lock up his Venetian apartment and retreat with his wife to a home owned by his in-laws one hour away in the hills. (Source: Washington Post)

And he's feeling pretty darn sorry for himself.

Well, sorry/not sorry, but the mournful sound you hear is the world's smallest violin - make that the world's smallest cello - playing a sad little song for you, Claudio Ronco. 

Ronco's reasoning behind refusing to get vaccinated doesn't appear to be purely health concerns, or religious belief, or "I've done my own research," or crackpot conspiracy theories coming out of whatever the Italian version of Qanon is. 

Nah. Mostly, he's always had an oppositional personality, and this is just an extension of his lifelong passion to follow his inner Groucho Marx/Professor Wagstaff: Whatever it is, I'm against.

Claudio Ronco is plenty miffed. He believes that the crackdown on the unvaccinated is tearing society apart, creating two classes of people, and pitting them against each other. He stokes his rage by invoking "the Nazi-era Aryan passport document."

Talk about a metaphor that doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. (Somehow made even worse by the the fact that Ronco himself is Jewish.)

You want to take a water taxi in Venice? Get f-ing vaccinated, Claudio.

But, no. 

Ronco said he is committed to his resistance, and it has consumed enough of his identity that it’s almost impossible to imagine reversing course. He said that even if he got infected — the lone scenario that would allow an unvaccinated person to get a Green Pass — he wouldn’t use the pass.

“It can’t go on like this,” Ronco said...

Well, Claudio, here's the thing. It. Doesn't. Have. To.