Vaccine reparations

 

 Rockawave 

The New York City Council’s Common Sense Caucus gathered on the steps of City Hall with unvaccinated city workers last week to introduce a resolution supporting state legislation that would reinstate all city employees who were fired for not complying with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Co-sponsored by NYC Councilwoman Joann Ariola and Minority Leader Joseph Borelli, the resolution, while non-binding and unlikely to be passed by the full Council, advocates for the passage of S7466A, the senate bill sponsored by NYS Senator Andrew J. Lanza.

“We’ve gathered here today because for the past two years, thousands of hard-working New Yorkers have been prevented from working at their jobs, jobs that they love,” Ariola said. “All for refusing to take the vaccine, a vaccine that is no longer mandated.”

Last week’s rally took place on Thursday, Feb. 8, which marked the first anniversary since the city ended the vaccine mandate for public and private sector workers. Yet despite the mandate being lifted, many of the 1,700 fired city workers have still not returned to work due to a waiver requirement that forces them to forfeit their civil service rights and rights to back pay in exchange for their jobs back.

“A piece of paper is all that stands between them and going back to work, going back to work in a city that is seriously under headcount in all of our essential services, as well as our educational services and our first responders,” Ariola added. “These are men and women we must get back to work. They have been wrongfully removed from their positions.”

Throughout the rally, numerous city workers who lost their jobs due to the mandate spoke of their experiences as well as those of their colleagues.

Michael Kane of the Teachers For Choice recalled how unvaccinated city workers felt isolated when the mandate was first rolled out two years ago, adding that they were often called names and ostracized for their decision to not take the COVID-19 vaccine.

“In the beginning, we were alone,” said Kane, a teacher of 15 years. “But history, while it turns at a long and winding road, it bends in the direction of truth. That’s where we’re headed now,” he added. “We’re suing because we were discriminated against because of our sincerely-held religious beliefs.”

Sal Maita of the Bravest For Choice echoed Kane’s remarks, adding that the goal of their movement is to appeal to the “humanity” of Mayor Eric Adams, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the Law Department, and elected officials on both sides of the aisle in hopes that it will inspire them to reinstate city workers without barriers like the waiver.

“It is now over two years since the pandemic propagated a scourge and a purge that turned our lives upside down,” said Maita, an FDNY firefighter of 15 years. “We must continue to fight. If we don’t, there’s other things coming down the line.”

The vaccination extortion mandates against city workers is over

 

Queens Chronicle

City workers and visitors to Department of Education buildings will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination starting Feb. 10, Mayor Adams announced on Monday.

“With more than 96 percent of city workers and more than 80 percent of New Yorkers having received their primary COVID-19 series and more tools readily available to keep us healthy, this is the right moment for this decision,” Adams said in a statement, encouraging people still to get vaccinated and boosted and take Covid precautions.

Many praised the move, saying it was overdue and followed common sense.

“Today’s announcement to suspend mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirements for all city workers proves that we’ve been correct all along,” Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Ozone Park), a member of the City Council’s Common Sense Caucus, said in a prepared statement. “From the very beginning of this pandemic, my colleagues and I have opposed these requirements.”

Also in the caucus are Queens Councilmembers Bob Holden (D-Maspeth) and Vickie Paladino (R-Whitestone).

Those who refused vaccination will no longer be subjected to weekly tests and new hires will not need to prove their vaccination status, opening up a pool of potential employees to fill pandemic-driven manpower gaps, Ariola noted.

But she and her colleagues noted that there is still work to be done as approximately 1,780 workers fired for refusing vaccination will not be able to automatically return to work. 

“This is an excellent step in the right direction, but more needs to be done: let’s rehire all those who lost their jobs to the DeBlasio-era mandates and bring the city back to normalcy,” Holden said on Twitter.

Paladino tweeted, “The war is not yet over, we must continue to fight for those who were wrongfully fired due to a personal medical decision.”

Those workers will be able to apply for positions with their former agencies through existing rules and regulations and hiring processes, the announcement from City Hall stated. The city said it has fully processed and issued decisions for all pending “reasonable accommodation” appeals.

“We are glad that the City has decided to stop fighting against our court victory overturning this unjust and illogical mandate,” PBA President Patrick Lynch said in a statement. 

In September, a judge ruled that the city’s vaccine mandate for municipal workers in the city’s largest police union was invalid.

“However, the job is only half done,” Lynch continued. “We call on the City to ensure that our members who were fired or had their employment unfairly impacted are reinstated, with back pay and without condition.”

Monday’s announcement includes city DOE employees as well as nonpublic school, early childcare and daycare staff.

Mayor Adams fires 1,430 non-compliant workers, doesn't do shit about bail reform

 NY Post

Mayor Eric Adams fired more than 1,400 government workers who refused to get vaccinated, the city revealed on Monday — including 36 NYPD personnel, 25 Fire Department workers and 914 Department of Education staffers.

The number had dropped considerably by last Friday’s vaccine mandate deadline as more employees submitted proof of getting at least one shot, City Hall officials said.

At one point last week, officials estimated that 4,000 were on the chopping block.

The number then dropped to around 3,400 — and then to 1,430 firings, officials said.

In one category, there were 2,400 veteran employees on leave without pay who had not opted to extend their health insurance and had not provided proof of vaccination. In the end, 1,428 of those city workers failed to get shots and were fired.

Nearly 1,000 — or 40 percent — provided evidence of getting at least one shot at the 11th hour and returned to work, officials said.

NY Post 

Mayor Adams appeared to throw in the towel on trying to convince Assembly Democrats to roll back the state’s bail-reform law following a closed-door meeting in Albany on Monday.

In remarks to reporters, Adams said he “shared” his plan to fight crime in the Big Apple before adding, “If I am not getting the things I laid out … I still have an obligation to keep the city safe.”

“That’s why we’re putting in place our anti-gun unit. That’s why we’re going to go after the causes and feeders of crime,” said Adams (above left with Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie).

Before the meeting, Assemblywoman Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn) — who last week clashed with Adams over his desire to let judges lock up defendants they deem dangerous — said that “we are gonna hold the line” on criminal justice reforms enacted in 2019. 

Municipal workers hold the line and have their livelihoods taken from them, lawmaker holds the line and Adams loses his spine. Looks like the mayor is swagger selective.

 

(Former Mayor de Blasio's) Mayor Adams' and NYC Health Commissioner Chokshi's vaccine mandate hits the 11th hour for non-vaxxed municipal workers

  

NY Daily News

Mayor Adams to city workers: Get vaccinated or get lost.

The Adams administration has alerted nearly 4,000 unvaccinated municipal employees — including cops and firefighters — that they will lose their jobs if they do not get their coronavirus shots by the end of next week.

Adams’ shot across the bow came in letters issued to the affected workers this week informing them that they have until Feb. 11 to get inoculated.

Speaking at City Hall on Monday, Adams said the ultimatum is about safety and argued that city employees have had long enough to comply with the municipal workforce vaccine mandate, which took effect Nov. 1.

“Safety is not only to stop the bullet, a knife or some other item. Safety is COVID. COVID is taking lives,” the mayor said. “There must be rules, and we must follow them. The rule is to get vaccinated if you are a city employee.”

The roughly 4,000 workers at risk of getting the boot fall into two categories, according to data provided by City Hall.

Blaz says everybody must get shot

  

NY Post

Mayor de Blasio is set to announce a coronavirus vaccine requirement for all municipal employees Wednesday, The Post has learned.

The city workers — including firefighters and cops — will have to get their first shot by Nov. 1, sources told The Post.

Currently, only Department of Education staff are required to be vaccinated, but de Blasio has long considered extending the mandate to all 300,000 city workers.

The current vaccination rate among the city’s workforce stands at about 83 percent. That number is significantly lower among cops and firefighters.

The NYPD has a vaccination rate of 69 percent among its 55,000 cops and civilian members.

Among members of the FDNY, the vaccination rate was even lower. Just 59 percent of smoke eaters have gotten the jab.

Pat Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, has said “the COVID-19 vaccine is a medical decision that members must make in consultation with their own healthcare providers.”

 NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea has said that he fully supports a mandate for police officers, citing the virus’ recent toll on cops.

“We lost three members last week, two of them to COVID, and I think it’s all unnecessary, to some degree. And I just, everyone I think, all across this country, really, should be embracing these vaccines,” Shea said Tuesday during an interview on NY1.

The virus was the leading cause of death among police officers across the country since the pandemic began — far exceeding the death toll by gunfire, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.

The news about the mandate did not sit well with one Brooklyn elected official.

“The mayor has no idea what he’s doing. We’re going to lose half of our cops and half of our fire department if this goes through, and then what?” the official said.

No vax, no test, no dice

  

SI Advance 

 Members of the NYPD will need to either get a COVID-19 vaccine or test negative every seven days as part of a new city mandate, or else forego their pay for every day of noncompliance, sources told the Advance/SILive.com.

The policy is set to begin Monday after data in late August showed about 47% of the department’s 35,000 uniformed officers and 18,000 civilian employees were vaccinated.

The testing must be done off-the-clock and the department will not accept at-home antigen tests as sufficient evidence of a negative test result. In a memo issued Wednesday to officers by the Police Benevolent Association, union president Pat Lynch wrote:

“Contrary to our previous conversations with the department, the order indicates that unvaccinated MOS must obtain a COVID-19 test on their own time. In the PBA’s view, any testing mandated by the Department must be conducted on job time and at the city’s expense, and any test received outside of the MOS’s regular working hours should be subject to overtime compensation.”

Young woman from Williamsburg got vaccinated and got COVID anyway

  

NY Post

 A Brooklyn woman who managed to avoid catching COVID-19 throughout 2020 went down with the bug this month — three weeks after being vaccinated.

Ashley Allen, 31, spoke to The Post by phone while quarantined in her Williamsburg apartment and in between calls from city contact tracers.

The contact tracers “started asking me questions about what I was doing three weeks ago,” Allen said. “And I said I was getting vaccinated.”

Allen was thrilled when she was able to book an appointment for the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Javits Center on March 10. 

 The sprawling convention space had just received new shipments of vaccine and was jabbing New Yorkers around the clock — Allen’s appointment was at 2 a.m. As a wine and spirits distributor, she was able to get a coveted early spot even while vaccines remained unavailable to most New Yorkers. Though she experienced a brief fever the next day, her side effects from the jab quickly resolved.

Even after Allen was vaccinated, she was careful to always mask up when outside and wash her hands frequently.

“On Wednesday, March 31, I started feeling like a scratch, a tickle in my throat of some sort. It was super dry,” she recalled. “Then I kept having this dry cough. It kinda felt like I had allergies.”

As her cough persisted, debilitating fatigue set in.

“It started getting really bad, to the point where I did go to City MD,” she said. “I thought I had Lyme disease. I spend a lot of time upstate.”

But a rapid coronavirus test on April 4, plus a second rapid test on April 5, showed COVID. A PCR test, which is more accurate, confirmed it.

The City MD staffer “asked when did you get your vaccine? And I said March 10, and she was like just shocked,” Allen said.

Allen’s case is rare, experts say, but not unheard of.

“The vaccine does not necessarily prevent you from getting COVID. It prevents you from being hospitalized or dying from it,” Dr. Kris Bungay, a Manhattan primary care physician, told The Post. “That is why we all still have to be careful.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: Here's another one. 

The best vaccine is not the one that you can get now.

NY Post

A Brooklyn man found out on Monday that he’d tested positive for the coronavirus — more than two weeks after getting the jab.

Matthew Sambolin, 39, told The Post that though he opted for the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine because it was “convenient,” he now wishes he’d gotten the Pfizer or Moderna shot instead.

“The risk was there, I was willing to take it. Now I’m wishing I made a different decision,” he said in a phone call from the spare bedroom of his Bath Beach home, where he’s currently quarantining.

Sambolin said he was experiencing minor symptoms, including a light cough and fatigue.

While a rapid test he took Saturday came back negative, a PCR test, which is more accurate, returned positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, according to documentation he provided.

“It was a shock,” Sambolin said of learning about his positive test on Monday.

An operations manager for two local radio stations, Sambolin said he had “no ambivalence” about the COVID vaccine and had been looking forward to getting his.

“I wanted to help get the herd immunity up,” he said.

Citifield vac site infrastructure is a joke

 

Queens Eagle

Azaz Ahsan and his dad got to Citi Field at 10 p.m. Wednesday for their scheduled COVID vaccine appointment an hour later. By the time they left, it was nearly 3 a.m. Thursday.

After a three-hour wait in the cold, Ahsan, 28, said he and his 65-year-old father entered the warm stadium just before 1 a.m. About 150 people were waiting on line in front of them, while hundreds more queued up in the cold outside the stadium gates, he said.

“Not opening up more of the stadium so the line can be inside is a disgrace,” Azaz said around midnight. 

Joanne Kostopoulos, a 48-year-old teacher from Oakland Gardens, said she decided to leave after waiting close to two hours past her scheduled 9:45 p.m. appointment. She had to be up in the morning to teach class and was told the wait would take at least two more hours, she said.

“[I] decided to leave because I wasn’t prepared to stand in the cold,” Kostopoulos said. “When I found out that I had to wait for one or two more hours before I made it inside I knew I had to leave because between work in the morning and the cold it just wouldn’t be feasible.”

Hundreds of Queens residents spent hours Wednesday night and well into Thursday morning waiting for their scheduled appointments at the 24-hour Citi Field vaccine site. Similar lines formed at another vaccine hub in the Bathgate section of the Bronx.

Once inside, the Citi Field vaccine recipients encountered an understaffed clinic with too few medical workers administering shots, six people told the Eagle. Several others posted photos and accounts on Twitter and Facebook. 

Ahsan said that of the 50 vaccine desks inside, “maybe 15 had nurses at them.” Vaccine recipients also had to fill out the same form twice even if they pre-registered online, he said.

Kambri Crews, who owns Q.E.D. in Astoria, said she waited from about 7:20 p.m. until receiving her shot at midnight. She had an appointment for 8 p.m.

“The nurse who gave me my shot said they didn’t have enough nurses,” she said. “The doctor across from her said he had been there since 7:30 a.m.”

Steven Baker, a 32-year-old human resources professional, shared photos from inside the Citi Field clinic.

“Empty registration and vaccine administration pods,” Baker said. “They're not fully staffed up.”

 Ahsan, Baker, Crews and others interviewed by the Eagle said staff were professional and as helpful as possible, but under strain from the volume of patients. 

They said workers from the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation told them the delays were due to a surge in rescheduled appointments without the necessary staff increase. Baker said his appointment was postponed due to a supply shortage last week and rescheduled for Wednesday. 

 

Governor Cuomo debuts vac center at York College, deflects blame for his policy decisions that caused 15,000 deaths

 This opening was done at 7:30 a.m. and was closed to the press. Pretty slick Andy.

COVID vaccine stadium sites strike out

 NY Post

 Plans to convert Yankee Stadium and Citi Field into large-scale coronavirus vaccination sites have officially been postponed indefinitely — while 15 existing city inoculation hubs will remain closed as New York continues to struggle with a supply shortage, officials said Monday.

The setbacks are the latest blows to New York’s problem-plagued vaccine rollout, most recently hampered by a lagging supply of shots from the federal government and manufacturer Moderna — forcing the city to reschedule tens of thousands of appointments when it became clear there weren’t enough jabs on hand.

“We want to get those to be full-blown, 24-hour operations but we don’t have the vaccine,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field during a Monday press briefing.

Hizzoner did not establish a new opening date for the venues, instead saying it was tied to when the city receives ample vaccine supplies to support the operations.

Middle Village nursing home withheld shots from patients because of state regs

 

NY Post

A Queens nursing home in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak withheld potentially lifesaving vaccines from rehab patients, leaving a city councilman’s 96-year-old mother and others to catch the contagion.

Dry Harbor Nursing Home in Middle Village — where 44 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since Dec. 22 — vaccinated its long-term residents shortly before Christmas, but not patients admitted for short-term care after being discharged from hospitals, Councilman Robert Holden told The Post.

Holden’s mom, Anne, and others finally did get shots in a second vaccination round on Jan. 13, but it was “too little, too late,” the furious Queens Democrat said.

Anne Holden, 96, was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday and admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Queens, where she remained on Saturday. 

“If she had gotten the shot before Christmas, she would have been eligible to get the second shot in January. The earlier the better,” Holden said.

“They knew the numbers were going up,” he added. “They should have done more –inoculated everybody as quickly as possible to stem the outbreak.”

Dry Harbor staff told Councilman Holden that it was following a state policy that gave priority for the vaccines to permanent nursing-home residents.

South Queens, home of the highest COVID positive cases in the city, finally gets a vaccination site

 

Queens Chronicle

Vaccines are coming to New York City’s top Covid hot spot: South Ozone Park.

The new vaccination center at the Aqueduct Race Track, the sole state-run site announced in Queens, will bring much-needed relief to the neighborhood, which currently has the highest positivity rate of all New York City ZIP codes at 15.94 percent as of Friday. 

Its two adjacent ZIP codes in Ozone Park and Richmond Hill have the second- and third-highest rates in the city.

The distribution site will open on Monday, and will fill a void left in the surging heart of the second wave left by the city’s vaccination sites, which do not extend into South Queens west of the Van Wyck Expressway. Community leaders in South Queens, who had been watching the positivity rate increase at an alarming rate for months, have been critical of the mayor’s decision not to include Richmond Hill or South Ozone Park on his list of priority neighborhoods.

The new site’s announcement, however, left some residents confused because it does not show up on the city’s Covid site map, leading them to wonder whether they were eligible. It seems to be the latest in a gap of communication between the city and state’s vaccination efforts.

In a meeting of the Ozone Park Residents Block Association and Cityline Ozone Park Civilian Patrol on Thursday night, President Sam Esposito said that the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Queens community liaison did not have the eligibility information on the site when he had asked him about it.

“The mayor and the governor have to get on the same page because when they argue we get hurt. And that’s not right,” said State Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) at the meeting, who added that his office had received inaccurate information about the vaccination efforts as well.

Queens nurse gets the first vaccine shot

  

The Independent

 New York City has vaccinated the first person in the United States to publicly receive the vaccine, with a nurse receiving her injection in a live-streamed process.

Sandra Lindsay, a critical care director, was given the injection in Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Queens, to applause from those watching. 

Queens was the hardest-hit borough of the hardest-hit city in the nation; the medical center where Ms Lindsay works has seen well over 100,000 Covid patients, and in April they had over 3,500 patients in their hospitals.

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, described it as “the final chapter”.

“But a vaccine doesn’t work if it’s in the vial,” he said.

“I hope this gives you and your colleagues a little more of a sense of safety and confidence, when you get the second shot.”

Ms Lindsey said that the injection felt the same as any other.

“I’m feeling well. I would like to thank all the frontline workers, all my colleagues, who have been doing a yeoman’s job to fight this pandemic all over the world,” she said.

"I feel hopeful today. I am relieved. I feel like healing is coming, I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history.

"I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe. We are in a pandemic so we all need to do our part to put an end to the pandemic and not give up so soon.