Vaccine extortion mandates continue for city workers but ends for private sector workers a week before Election Day

 

NY Daily News

The city’s coronavirus vaccine mandates for private sector workers and student athletes are ending, but the inoculation requirement for municipal workers will remain — at least for the time being.

Mayor Adams announced the rollback Tuesday at a City Hall press conference, stressing the need for New Yorkers to get their COVID booster shots.

Implemented by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the private sector and student mandates have been in effect since late last year.

The workforce rule, which was the first of its kind in the country when rolled out by de Blasio in December, required that all private sector employees in the city be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That mandate will sunset on Nov. 1.

The second policy, which mandated high school students be vaccinated to engage in sports and other extracurricular activities, ended Tuesday.

Adams attempted to temper his announcement with another message: that New Yorkers should get new booster shots aimed at protecting against highly transmissible COVID variants. To reinforce that, he got his second booster shot from the city’s Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan in front of a roomful of reporters.

“It is time to move on to the next level of fortifying our city,” Adams said. “It’s imperative to send the right message and lead by example as I’m doing today by getting my booster shot.”

Adams framed the rescinding of the mandates as providing more “flexibility” to parents and businesses regarding vaccines.

He noted that his shot Tuesday is just the first step in a new citywide digital and print vaccination campaign to encourage booster shots.

But even as Adams and Vasan announced the new campaign and the end of the two mandates, they struggled to explain the rationale behind enacting the one rollback while continuing to keep in place the mandate that city employees must be vaccinated — a contentious rule that led to workers being fired, lawsuits and political protests.

“We’re in a steady phase of pivot and shift,” the mayor said when asked if he plans to peel back the mandate on city workers. “We do things. We roll things out slowly. Right now, that is not on the radar for us.”

When asked how he can justify his decision, Adams said: “I don’t think anything dealing with COVID makes sense, and there’s no logical pathway of [what] one can do  You make the decisions based on how to keep our city safe, how to keep our employees operating.”

Vasan responded that it’s important to not view “any of these decisions in isolation.”

“They’re all connected,” he said, referring to the city’s COVID policies. “We’re looking at all of our policies and thinking about a glide path towards normal, whatever the new normal looks like.”

Keeping the city worker vaccine extortion mandate, which looks like it's indefinite, is brazen discrimination and these two assholes are blatantly telling the public not to question it because they are not smart enough to comprehend while doing the worst gaslighting about justifying this policy that has done major damage to city services. And they did this hours after President Biden said the pandemic was over. When will the press finally question why this farcical unscientific mandate is allowed to continue and who is benefiting off it?