Doubt it. The court also said the following (court towards the end indicates that the mandate didn’t make sense even when the order was issued):
> “”Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19. As of the day of this Decision, CDC guidelines regarding quarantine and isolation are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The Petitioners should not have been terminated for choosing not to protect themselves. We have learned through the course of the pandemic that the vaccine against Covid-19 is not absolute. Breakthrough cases occur, even for those who have been vaccinated and boosted. President Joseph Biden has said that the pandemic is over.& The State of New York ended the Covid-19 state of emergency over a month ago.? As this Court stated in its decision in the Rivicci matter, this is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but about how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic. See Rivicci v. NYC Fire Dept., Index No.
85131/2022. They worked without protective gear. They were infected with Covid-19, creating natural immunity. They continued working full duty while their exemption requests were pending.
They were terminated and are willing to come back to work for the City that cast them aside.
The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health: it was about compliance. If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued. If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for vaccination for all residents. In a City with a nearly 80% vaccination rate, we shouldn't be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down.
If it was about safety and public health, no one would be exempt. It is time for the City of New York to do what is right and what is just.”
Yikes. This reads like a gish-gallop of anti-vax talking points. I don’t even necessarily disagree with the decision to reinstate the employees, but this legal reasoning is embarrassing.
Edit: I’m happy to learn that the New York Supreme Court is not the highest court in New York, this entire thread is misleading (I think people are assuming New York’s highest court slapped down vaccine mandates). I don’t know why New York has to name their courts in such weird ways…
I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree.
Vaccines offer some personal protection but predominantly become effective by achieving herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy undermines this goal and weakens the system. Being pro-vaccine is senseless without being in favor of enough people being vaccinated to provide strong immunity, including for those who cannot be vaccinated due to medical complications.
Even if you were to argue on behalf of one who is indifferent to vaccines but is against mandates, so long as those mandates encourage vaccination, they effectively are discouraging vaccination and are thus anti-vax.
It can be hard to recognize all of this without the right perspective. In isolation, it is easy to claim that one is not anti-vax; however actions speak infinitely louder than words.
This is a crazy level of absolutism that seems only to exist to force a "with us or against us" reaction.
I think everyone where I live should probably be supplementing vitamin D in the winter months because it is damn near impossible for even people working outdoors all day to get enough vitamin D through natural sunlight at this parallel. Never would I dream of mandating a vitamin D regimen to people. My lack of wanting a vitamin D mandate, by your very argument, would make me anti vitamin D.
I take vitamin D daily, and have convinced others they probably should too, which I think makes me an advocate on some level. If even your top percentile advocates are "anti" from your operating definition, because they don't go far enough, you may be an extremist.
This argument is useless in the face of the COVID shots because they do not prevent transmission, an important factor in herd immunity being effective.
Being anti-vax-mandate for an ineffective vaccine is not anti-vax in any way.
Ok I have more vaccines then the law requires because I went places where it made sense to get more shots for more disease.
I have not touched the COVID shot because I did not trust it for these reasons:
- vaccines take years to test not months
- there were new untested biotech involved
- in short order I was being told that it does not work for this flavor of COVID.
And now it is acknowledged to not protect you or prevent the spread of COVID.
How can you claim any social good here? it has bad side effects and does not work.
The etymology of vaccine comes from vacca, which is Latin for cow. Vaccines were originally discovered after finding that milkmaids seemed somehow immune to smallpox, which otherwise not only made people gravely ill but had a mortality rate upwards of 30%. The reason, it was discovered, is that they were regularly exposed to cowpox which sufficiently strengthened their immune systems to provide effective immunity to smallpox. And thus the field was born.
Herd immunity does not make vaccines work better, but is a tertiary effect whereby unvaccinated individuals can receive effective protection simply by living in an area with a high vaccination rate. In extreme cases (such as with smallpox) diseases can even be completely eliminated, but this requires extremely effective vaccines that prevent infection and spread, vaccines that are robust against mutations, and diseases that are unlikely to be able to exist without humans. None of these factors apply to COVID or the vaccines developed for it.
The problem is that this is a very first mandate for vaccination we ever imposed on ordinary people.
The US has very complex society and diverse population, so mandates do not work and might create backclash.
I think mass vaccination can be easily achieved by mass marketing. Mandates just made this way too political: and as we can see did not achieve a thing.
Funny how millions of people who had all the common vaccines except the covid "vaccine" suddenly became anti-vaxer.
That like saying someone who smokes cigarettes, pipes and shisha but not cigars must be anti-smoking.
The common western covid "vaccines" do not have the properties of other common vaccines. They are at best comparable to flu shots which I know no one under the age of 50 who has ever took them. Are these all anti-vaxers now too?
Have you ever head anyone talk about herd immunity related to flu shots pre-covid?
Almost everyone alive today apparently prevented herd immunity for flu most of his life by not taking the flu shot. So we're all anit-vaxers.
>I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree.
You need some more moments I guess, you clearly didn't think this trough.
One can be absolutely pro-vaccine, want to drive down vaccine hesitancy rates and still think that mandating vaccinations is not the way to go.
For example they could argue that people will rebel against "you must do X" reflectively, but a well designed and sensitive information campaign might win them over.
We knew the odds the Covid vaccine would substantially reduce transmission were very low. Covid first impacts your mucosal immune compartment, which means an infection first gives you all the symptoms exhibited by a mild case of Covid. It also mostly spreads from there as you exhale.
The vaccine does not target your mucosal immune system. It's injected. Thus, the vaccine will help you if you develop a severe case of Covid that spreads beyond your throat/sinuses/lungs. Immune system compartments work largely independently. [1]
> The first is that immune responses induced within one compartment are largely confined in expression to that particular compartment. The second is that lymphocytes are restricted to particular compartments by expression of homing receptors that are bound by ligands, known as addressins, that are specifically expressed within the tissues of the compartment. (Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease. 5th edition.)
“A talking point” is a very sleazy turn of phrase. You don’t say it is wrong, incorrect, harmful; you just apply guilt by association even though the statement in question may have merit by itself.
> Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19.
This was not true before Omicron. Vaccination was never a 100% protection against contracting or transmitting SARS-CoV-2, but it did significantly reduce the rate of both. People who refused to vaccinate themselves were, in fact, putting people around them at greater risk.
That protection has decreased with Omicron, though it is still not zero (and with boosters, it increases again for a few months).
That's not the case. Even against Delta effectiveness dropped very rapidly and then actually went negative. The UK is one of the few countries that kept regularly publishing case stats even after this happened and it showed that once the initial vaccine 'high' wore off, vaccinated people were getting infected more frequently than the unvaccinated. Omicron didn't change this.
This sort of thing is unintuitive but has happened before. In fact Fauci cited the possibility of this effect as one of the reasons not to rush the trials. Unfortunately the trials did not detect this, probably due to bad use of statistics (the way they classify people as unvaccinated for weeks after having actually been given the shot can warp the stats).
> Even against Delta effectiveness dropped very rapidly and then actually went negative.
Effectiveness against Delta did not go negative. Protection against infection decreased, but was still quite significant. A single booster also greatly increased protection against Delta, which is why many countries initiated booster campaigns in the Fall of 2021.
> Unfortunately the trials did not detect this, probably due to bad use of statistics
The trials were always designed to test protection against symptomatic disease, severe cases and death. They were not designed to test protection against infection. Everyone who read the trial registrations and the studies knew this from the beginning. The fact that this has recently been presented as a big revelation in the media just shows how uninformed the public (and much of the media) is. It's also a reflection of the revisionist narrative (i.e., we shouldn't have done anything about CoVID) taking hold.
Protection was falling steadily at the time delta disappeared completely, and continued falling on the same trend far below zero.
Your description of the trials is perfectly inverted! I wonder how that happens. The trials weren't designed to detect anything except reduced PCR test positivity i.e. infections. They didn't attempt to determine what a "severe case" was because that distinction was invented only after the falling effectiveness made it necessary to do so, and as for death, more people died in the vaccine arm than the placebo arm! They definitely didn't make claims about reducing the death rate because it was so tiny to begin with that they couldn't get a big enough sample of COVID deaths to make any conclusions, not even with 64,000 odd people.
Because athletes and performers are irreplaceable and bring in tourist revenue which the city wants. Firefighters are more easily replaceable and have no effect on tourism. Having competing priorities is common enough, I don't see what doesn't make sense here. The city wants everyone to be vaccinated but it also wants broadway and basketball to be happening more, so they came up with this policy.
> Because athletes and performers are irreplaceable and bring in tourist revenue which the city wants. Firefighters are more easily replaceable and have no effect on tourism.
I believe this is the most cynical thing I've read yet today.
> I don't see what doesn't make sense here
If the Athletes and Performers are so irreplaceable, then wouldn't you demand they be the most protected by the vaccine, and thus require them to have it before you would require the firefighters? They are so replaceable, afterall...
> so they came up with this policy.
They wanted to force compliance, but then realized there are some people who see themselves as above compliance, so they carved out their own policy in a telling way to kowtow to them.
Dollars are replaceable. People aren't. You can't actually be happy to wrap this cynicism around this, can you?
This is the reason they did it. It's also the reason that most firefighters and others like them do not vote for politicians like Eric Adams. Despite the fact that he's a former police officer.
Well clearly there is an elite class to whom body autonomy is granted, and an underclass who must follow arbitrary and capricious rules. OP appreciates that celebrities and entertainers are our betters and should not be held to the same standard.
Yes exactly. You are allowed to infect people with a deadly pandemic if you're rich, but if you're poor you have to risk personal medical consequences or lose your remote job.
Reality is that not letting Kyrie play basketball cost New York millions, and firing a firefighter doesn’t. Tons of people lose their jobs when entertainment acts close because the performers aren’t vaccinated. Money talks, does that mean celebrities should not be held to the same standard? Not really, it just means that holding them to the same standard would cost more than adams was willing to pay, whether it was the right thing to do or not.
This is the issue. Politicians claim it about health and saving "grandma", but when the number of dollars get big enough, all that goes out the window.
So apparently getting vaccinated is critically important, but not more important than money.
FWIW, there was a vocal contingent of Marxists on Twitter who saw the mandates for the erosion of worker power and rights that they were, and vigorously opposed them. Richard Wolff even came around eventually, as well as Jimmy Dore after having his own personal run-in with the nasty side effects which are all too common with these vaccines.
Sadly, though, some of the most awful scapegoaters of the unvaccinated were indeed on the "left." Noam Chomsky even said they should be excluded from society completely, and if that meant they couldn't even obtain food, well, that would be their problem.
Because they can be replaced by vaccinated people I guess and if one or two can’t that’s ok because they’ve still got all the other ones. Kyrie and the Yankees can’t be replaced.
I’d be willing to bet I could more easily find a team full of people to swing a bat or throw a ball than a couple thousand people willing and able to rush into a burning building.
> Same for many other jobs like garbage collection.
Spoken like someone who hasn't been to New York. I love the city, its a fun and vibrant place. But they have some unusual trash policies (primarily they don't have alleys so trash has to be dumped on the main sidewalk) and wherever you go its not uncommon for the sidewalks to be lined with trash waiting for pickup.
How would they collect trash efficiently during the day when many streets are packed. Not to mention the extra traffic a slow moving often stopping garbage truck would cause
Aren't NYC's financials a basket case though? Surely its politicians don't care much about bringing revenue to the city, rather bringing profit to their friends and families and lobbyists. That is what makes more sense here.
My understanding is that a significant number of Yankees were unvaccinated and would not have been able to play home games. There are a significant number of New Yorkers that would’ve been very upset had that come to pass, so politicians acted according to public will and gave them an exception. Does that mean this wasn’t also corruption? No, but it is a reasonable thing to do even without corruption imo.
You just said it was for revenue to the city though.
I'm not really convinced about this new explanation either. I've seen little to no evidence that upsetting significant numbers of people factored into any other decisions around covid response, including the significant number who were upset by the creation of these double standards.
I'm going to have to stick with pure and simple corruption as the simplest and most likely explanation, unless there is some extraordinary evidence supporting some other less likely one.
I meant revenue that went to businesses/people in the city, like the general ecosystem not just the government. And a large part of the backlash was from people whose jobs were eliminated until full scale entertainment came back. It was a big deal to tons of people.
And I meant it's just simple corruption because there is little to no evidence that can be produced which supports the fringe theory that politicians care about the city's finances or what is and is not a big deal to the common people.
They care about their finances and those of their friends and lobbyists and donors, so corruption is the simplest and most obvious explanation.
You could probably make a pretty good argument. A firefighter deals closely with the population in non-voluntary situations. An athlete or performer is likely quite a bit separated from the crowd watching them, and they're choosing to be there anyway. I don't know if there was actually an attempt to justify the decision, though.
And I imagine someone could also make a pretty good argument in the other direction. A firefighter is probably going to be wearing a mask. Performers by their nature are yelling into a crowded indoor space.
The argument at the time was that it was "creating a double standard that disadvantaged local artists and athletes" compared to performers that were not residents of NYC (but commuted in for work).
Stuff like this and allowing certain events while vilifying others as "superspreader events" killed a lot of people's belief in mitigation strategies IMO. A virus is a virus and doesn't recognize human needs or wants. Either there are no exceptions for anyone or we shouldn't bother.
The same happened in CA with some stores being open and others closed. Why was Home Depot open? It made no sense in terms of spreading the disease . It was just arbitrary BS.
Closing the beaches was stupid too. If there ever was a safe place then it was the beach or state park wheee uou are in the open and the window blows.
Home Depot was open because people need to fix shit around their house if you want them to stay home. What's arbitrary about that?
I agree with you about the beaches. But in the early days, we didn't really know what worked and what didn't. People said 6 feet apart was safe enough indoors because "droplets containing the virus fall to the ground".
It was arbitrary because small hardware stores had to close, while big ones could stay open. Also, because in most states someone in the governor’s office just went down a random list of professions or business types and decided on the spot whether to shut them down or not. That’s the very definition of arbitrary and capricious. It also fails the rational basis test, since the government hadn’t even come up with a rationale for why certain businesses have to close while others can stay open. Or why a Walmart could have a 500 people in it, while churches were limited to 10 people at a time (regardless of the size of the church’s building, even), etc.
I didn't know about small hardware stores being forced to close. That's the arbitrary part then. If it was a question of space, they should've been allowed to continue business with curbside pickups.
Religion and community are important. But congregating inside a church building is not something that needs to be prioritized during a pandemic. Schools and daycares first.
A small hardware store in town went out of business because they were forced to close. Same for a lot of other small stores. I could understand reducing number of people in the store but closing totally while keeping others open simply didn’t make sense. I think the exceptions had more to do with successful lobbying
than with health reasons.
People were rabidly cheering it on too. Police going around shutting playgrounds and arresting parents for playing outdoors with their children, while at the same time the politicians they voted for were constantly and egregiously shown to be flouting the rules on frivolities, parties, travel, fun. And there were excuses for the politicians and bloodlust for the commoner trying to exercise or raise their child. Absolutely flabbergasting.
I used to wonder how on earth nazis and communists and the like were able to seize power and control of a population, and now I've seen it. Covid has been a really amazing learning experience for me.
“I used to wonder how on earth nazis and communists and the like were able to seize power and control of a population, and now I've seen it”
That’s how the US has worked for a long time. See the war on drugs and mass incarceration, laws against black people and extreme political polarization. There was always a group of “others” that people wanted to get punished.
I bet if Trump had been a little smarter he would have got away with a lot more while people cheering him on. But it seems a lot of political institutions are eroding so maybe the next strongman will be able to go way further.
Yes that seems to be how it goes. Drum up irrational fear, lay the blame at the others, create hatred against them, then it becomes almost a self-sustaining mass psychosis. Intellectually I understood that's basically how it works, I guess I just didn't want to believe it.
People didn't care that vaccines didn't stop the virus spreading, they didn't care that insignificant transmission occurred due to individuals or small family groups enjoying the outdoors, they didn't care that some people were as irrationally scared of the vaccines as they were of covid. It wasn't about any kind of measured response designed for the real greater good. They wanted to see those hated others suffer and be punished for their heresy and audacity.
You've got cause and effect backwards. Societies have to overreact to pandemics, because those that didn't got wiped out - eventually. Enforcement of quarantine and similar measures through extreme social norms is a necessary adaptation to the threat of plague; civilization wouldn't be able to exist without it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cYPm__73XI I still remember this video that was widely circulated. The bans were never more than politicians wanting to look like they were doing something.
Dunno how it is in NY, but in my city, the fire department spends way more time on paramedic duties than on actually fighting fires (around 40 EMS calls for every fire call). IMO if you're getting a ride to the hospital from someone it matters if they have COVID. And even though the vaccines don't guarantee that you won't get infected, the government does have an interest in preventing severe infections. COVID was the #1 killer of first responders
I am perfectly happy to have a COVID spewing firefighter get me to the hospital after a car accident and let me take my chances there, than to be left without a first responder. 100% of the time.
I would rather have a live and vaccinated firefighter take me to the hospital than have to wait at home because an unvaccinated firefighter died of COVID or is hooked up to a vent
>I am perfectly happy to have a COVID spewing firefighter get me to the hospital after a car accident and let me take my chances there, than to be left without a first responder. 100% of the time.
Except that doesn't apply to this situation. IIRC, ~95-97% of cops, EMTs and firefighters in NYC were already vaccinated and those that weren't were given ample time (extended several times) to get vaccinated.
As such, that was never an issue.
That said, there certainly was an arbitrary and capricious standard applied in this case.
Also “In 2021, 1,353,500 fires resulted in 3,800 civilian deaths and 14,700 injuries”. By comparison, Wikipedia says there were 42,915 deaths due to motor vehicles in 2021, more than 10x. So it makes sense that even if fire department only dealt with road crashes they would spend more time on that than on fires.
> the fire department spends way more time on paramedic duties than on actually fighting fires
Why does the fire department do medical stuff in the US? Why isn’t it medical people providing paramedics? Seems like something that should be left to professionals?
Most common example is probably motor vehicle accidents where firefighters (in concert with police officers) will secure the scene, gain access to the vehicle(s) if necessary, etc.
A lot of firefighters are also EMTs and paramedics. Both because in places with volunteer firefighters they can just work as EMS, and also because there's quite a bit of overlap in that if you need a firefighter there's a decent chance having EMS around would be beneficial as well.
Firefighters who aren't trained in EMS are not providing medical care, so saying "leave it to the professionals" is pretty dismissive in this context.
What makes you think the fire department's medical staff aren't professionals? My city FD has 148 EMTs and 88 paramedics and are assigned to every station and unit in the city.
My county is kind of weird, but only firefighters are allowed to be paramedics here. They are considered professionals, they have to take the same classes and get the same certs as paramedics in other areas