Rules For Thee, Not For Me: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Bypasses Hong Kong Hotel COVID Quarantine

It's good to be a very rich, and elite person when you want to get past those pesky quarantines that some nations around the world are still forcing on the common man and woman who aren't banking royalty. In the case of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Hong Kong's 21-day hotel quarantine doesn't apply.

“The justification is related to economy, as this is a very huge bank with key business in Hong Kong,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in a regular briefing on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. “He needs to come to Hong Kong for work for about a day.”

Lam noted that Dimon still had limits placed on his itinerary and his trip was "restricted" and the risk "is totally manageable."

Oh really?

In August, Hong Kong granted a 21-day quarantine exemption to Nicole Kidman who was in town to film a TV series, proving that you just need to be from the elite class to get right past that COVID quarantine. Hong Kong's stance on Kidman was that her trip was "for the purpose of performing designated professional work, taking into account that it is conducive to maintaining the necessary operation and development of Hong Kong's economy."

Now it's Jamie Dimon's turn to bypass this ridiculous three-week quarantine while the country chases COVID Zero in an attempt to eradicate the virus from the city of 7.4 million or so. If you aren't a rich banker or actress working on an Amazon-funded movie, your typical trip to Hong Kong includes spending three weeks in a hotel if you're entering from the U.K. or the U.S. even if you're vaccinated. Most tourists and non-residents are banned altogether.

As we have learned through this pandemic, those who scream the loudest about how you should be living in constant fear (in this case, Hong Kong leaders) have no problem allowing their business friends to keep living their lives like normal. When these leaders are caught cheating the rules they've set for the common man, there's always a "he's an important banker" or "she's helping develop Hong Kong's economy" reason as to why these people are exempt from the standard rules.

Interesting, right?

Here in the U.S., it's like when the DC mayor officiated and attended a wedding with "hundreds" of unmasked guests at a time when the city had an indoor mask mandate. Or like in 2020 when disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo was going to do Thanksgiving with his mother and family even though he lectured New Yorkers about how they were going to kill family members if they had dinner.

Or like Gavin Newsom breaking his own indoor dining rules. Or like Denver's mayor telling people to avoid flying just before he boarded a flight to Houston. Or like San Francisco's mayor breaking her own indoor masking rules.

“We don’t need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing,” she told a local TV station after being outed for being a hypocrite.

And so Dimon will go on his trip to Hong Kong and fellow rich people will continue to bypass the dumb rules that continue to pinch the freedoms of the common person.

How long will the mandate regimes continue to operate in such a manner?

If it's up to Joe Biden, it won't come until he's forced 100 million to get a COVID vaccine shot. "We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us," he said in early November.

In other words, there's a long way to go before the elites have any interest in releasing their grip on your lives.