California is a strange place.  It has terrible public transportation and some of the highest gas prices in the country.  The state spends a fortune on education, yet it's one of the lowest-ranked in the country for students performing at grade level.  Meghan Markle lives in California, and she's a typical specimen of the celebrities who flock to the Golden State, to bask in the sun and spend tons of money and cry constantly about how abused they are.  California also has the dubious distinction of having the biggest population of illegal aliens while prominent Californians like Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris push the idea that the United States is a racist nation.

However, it would be wrong to think that California is already as bizarre as it can get.  Los Angeles, which vies with San Francisco for strangeness, has just decided to implement one of the strictest vaccination mandates in the country.  If you want to go to almost any business in Los Angeles, such as a restaurant, a shopping mall, a theater, or a nail salon, you will have to provide proof of vaccination.  Even gyms and yoga studios and museums will be required to ask patrons for their COVID vaccination card and deny them entry if they can't produce it.

What makes this order especially strange is that Los Angeles County has less stringent rules than the city of Los Angeles.  Cities are allowed to pass harsher rules than the county, which is causing a great deal of confusion.  Business-owners worry about losing customers and putting employees into dangerous situations by requiring them to ask prospective patrons for vaccination cards.  City officials have shrugged off such concerns by giving businesses until the end of November to comply with the new mandate, with threats of fines ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 for violations.

It remains to be seen how this mandate will work in practice, considering that almost a million illegal aliens live in the Los Angeles metro area and Biden is not mandating that illegal aliens must be vaccinated against COVID.  The homeless, who number in the tens of thousands, are also untouched by vaccine mandates.  However, in Los Angeles, starting on November 29, 2021, only law-abiding, business-owning, tax-paying legal immigrants and American citizens are required to be vaccinated and to show proof of vaccination to be out in public.  Yes, California is a strange place.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of Future Slave, a story about a 21st-century black teenager who is sent back in time and becomes a slave in the Old South.

Image: Downtown Los Angeles by Max Pixel.  Public domain. 

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