NEWS SAYS: Patience thins with flip-floppin’ mayor

We cannot condone Councilman Kalman Yeger, Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein and state Sen. Simcha Felder figuratively taking the bolt-cutters into their own hands and opening up coronavirus-padlocked playgrounds in Midwood and Borough Park, but the confusing signals from City Hall about what’s allowed and what isn’t is enough to make anyone stir crazy.

At his Tuesday briefing, Mayor de Blasio scolded the playground-breakers: “If folks act prematurely and that causes the disease to start spreading again, then that’s the kind of thing that will undermine our ability to get to phase two,” adding, “there’s a reason for these rules.”

Rules schmules, as they say in Brooklyn, which don’t apply to protests.

The mayor’s inconsistency extends to the apparent difference between virus-risking carousing outside bars, which is barred, and protesting, which is virus-risking, but allowed.

“We’re seeing a social movement growing before our very eyes that’s addressing 400 years of oppressive reality in this country, demanding a change in the reality of how we police,” he says. And so? “You have to recognize the historical moment and allow some space.”

However, de Blasio’s lockdown exception for protests may be costing us all, as the next phase of re-opening could be in abeyance, saying, “We want to know what that has resulted in, in terms of the spread of the disease, or maybe it hasn’t. We don’t know that answer yet because not enough time has passed.”

Great, so now the free pass (and official encouraging) for protests might hold us back and could land people in the hospital or the morgue.

This is mayoral flip-floppery far worse than some overeager pols in Brooklyn.