Real estate firm and big bank swaggers back at Adams

 

Brooklyn Eagle

A lawsuit has been filed in federal court challenging New York City’s sweeping mandate requiring nearly all private-sector businesses to ban unvaccinated employees from the workplace, asserting that the city’s attempt to control the coronavirus pandemic deprives tens of thousands of businesses from pursuing their livelihoods.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday contends businesses like Cornerstone Realty, a Staten Island real estate firm that is the only named plaintiff in the case, are being unduly forced to fire unvaccinated workers and asserts the city’s vaccination edict lacks mechanisms for businesses to appeal.

“This case is not about vaccines, but about an employer’s right to be heard,” the lawsuit states.

The edict was one of two-term Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final acts before relinquishing his office at the end of the year. He set a Dec. 27 deadline for virtually all private sector businesses — roughly 184,000 businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of people — to require workers to show proof that they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Businesses face fines of at least $1,000 for noncompliance.

The city’s new mayor, Eric Adams, has been in his job for less than a week but must immediately confront myriad challenges posed by COVID-19, including the latest surge that has spiked the number of infections to record levels.

It remains to be seen how Adams will respond to those challenges and what measures put in place by his predecessor he might keep or jettison as he formulates his own pandemic policies. Before taking office, Adams affirmed his support for the vaccine mandate, as well as de Blasio’s insistence on keeping schools open.

While acknowledging the turmoil the pandemic has wrought on small businesses, Adams made no mention of the mandate in his remarks during a visit Tuesday to a struggling small business in Manhattan, where he signed an executive order that he said would “slash red tape, reduce needless fines and penalties,” and would “bring relief to our heartbroken entrepreneurs.”

 

NY Post

Chase Bank has shuttered more than three dozen branches in the Big Apple as the mega-bank struggles with staff shortages and vaccine mandates amid a surge in Omicron.

While the COVID variant has shelved many JP Morgan Chase employees, at least one local pol blamed the bank closures on “prohibitive” city and state mandates that require private-sector workers to be vaccinated before they can show up for a day at the office.

“It doesn’t give business an opportunity to open the front door,” City Councilman Joe Borelli, a Staten Island Republican, told The Post.

“If we want to re-populate our offices in New York, this mandate is a prohibition on many of those people coming back,” Borelli said.

Borelli also took to Twitter Wednesday to make his point, posting a photo of the laminated signs that adorn many closed branches.

“I don’t think the mandates are working in #nyc,” he wrote.

“Our branch is temporarily closed due to New York City’s COVID-19 Workplace Vaccination Order,” the sign on the door of one branch reads.

Swaggering Mayor Adams orders big banks to come back to the office

  

NY Daily News 

Mayor Adams wants the Big Apple’s financial powerhouses to get back to business — period.

The newly minted mayor took aim at major investment firms in the city on Monday for ordering their employees to work from home for the time being as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations continue to swell in New York.

Adams, who was sworn in Saturday, said the resumption of remote work policies at big banks like JPMorgan Chase ripples through the economy and hurts low-wage workers.

“We must get open, and let me tell you why: That accountant from a bank that sits in an office — it’s not only him, it feeds our financial ecosystem. He goes to the cleaners and get his suits clean, he goes out to the restaurants, he brings in a business traveler, which is 70% of our hotel occupancy,” he said in an appearance on Bloomberg TV.

“You can’t run New York City from home. We must have everyone participate in our financial ecosystem to allow the low-skill, unskilled and people who are doing hourly employees to actually be part of our eco-system. They can’t remotely do their job.”

Adams’ adamant push for office work came on the heels of Goldman Sachs becoming the latest major financial firm to tell its city-based employees to work from home for the first couple of weeks of January to try to blunt the recent surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the extremely contagious omicron variant.

JPMorgan Chase, CitiBank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley have already instituted similar policies.

The remote work precautions come as New York continues to see its COVID-19 curve trend in the wrong direction.

According to data from the state Health Department, 23.17% of all tests conducted across New York in the 24-hour period ending Monday morning came back positive, with 29,246 infections recorded in the city alone. Hospitalizations are ticking up at an alarming rate as well, and 103 New Yorkers died from COVID-19 statewide in the same reporting window, the highest daily death toll in months, the data showed.

Despite the pandemic resurgence, Adams said the city can’t return to business shutdowns, arguing that widespread availability of coronavirus vaccines should allow New Yorkers to “live with COVID.”

“I need my companies back open and operating,” he said. “You can’t run a city like New York on 30% occupancy in buildings. We need to get back to business and open our city.”

On the topic of vaccines, Adams said he’s considering mandating booster shots — which have proven highly effective in protecting people against severe COVID-19 symptoms — for the municipal workforce. He said he’ll have an announcement on the matter “around April.”

Meet the new mandates, same as the old mandates

Chaos Erupts when Eric Adams comes out of his office. Protesters against mandates confront and yell at him because of the mandates #BreakingNews #NYC #MANDATE pic.twitter.com/46slZjie8y

— Leeroy Johnson (@LeeroyPress) November 3, 2021

 

 Eyewitness News

 Mayor-elect Eric Adams held COVID news conference unveiling his plans to combat COVID in New York City as he prepares to take office this weekend.

He was joined by current Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi and incoming Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan.

Adams said the plan is to, "Keep our city open. That's the goal. We can't shut down our city again."

As for existing mandates regarding vaccines and masks, they will stay in place with a few changes and adjustments.

The private-sector employee vaccine mandate will stay in place with a focus on compliance, not punishment. A dedicated unit will work with small businesses, stakeholders, and the mayor's corporate engagement committee to help implement the mandate, foregoing fines if employers engage with the city to help get their workers vaccinated.

The city will study the need for an "up to date" mandate program to require booster shots for all New Yorkers currently covered by the vaccine mandates and engage with unions, the business community, and other shareholders. The data shows that booster shots are extremely effective against Delta and earlier COVID strains, but the city says it does not yet have definitive data on omicron.

The city will set a deadline of this spring for a decision on whether or not there should be a vaccine mandate in schools for the fall of 2022. The decision will be based on expected COVID risk in city schools and vaccination rates among students.

All other current mandates stay in place, including for masks.

"We are going to get through this," Adams said. "New York will lead the way for this entire country to follow."

As for New York City Schools, they will fully reopen on January 3, and they will implement the Stay Safe, Stay Open plan.

It includes doubling surveillance testing and adjusting the Situation Room and quarantine protocols. Sending home millions of rapid at-home tests for students and educators.
They will also strengthen mitigation measures including higher quality masks and better ventilation.

 Incoming-Mayor Adams says they will surge resources to the Health + Hospitals system to ensure enough capacity to address new hospitalizations from omicron. Ambulatory care will be shifted to virtual when possible to shore up nurse staffing levels and other measures.

He also plans to improve safety in congregate settings like jails, shelters, and nursing homes at high risk by supporting rapid isolation and quarantine. They will also provide ready access to vaccination and testing.

As far as COVID testing efforts for the city, the Adams administration plans to increase testing with more sites and mass-access to rapid tests.

The city says it will provide clear testing protocols for specific settings, including in the private sector.

The city will also surge resources to the Health Department, including more than 250 staff, to keep the public health infrastructure strong and at adequate capacity.

QPL Omicron shutdowns

 Update from Larry, your friendly neighborhood retired federal transit man:

FYI

Add the Douglaston Little Neck Library to the list of closed branches.  They had a sign posted this past Monday that they were closed to further notice.  I wonder how many more branches are also closed in addition to the list you  provided.

During my previous visits, all staff and patrons wore masks.  If you didn't have a mask, one was available at the door staffed by an elderly guard probably being paid a little more than minimum wage.  He probably needed the income to supplement his social security and meager savings.

  

Perhaps they should just publish a list of which branches are still open.

 

A covid case just shut down the Elmhurst branch.-JQ LLC

 

 

Omicron panic shuts down hipster eateries

 

 Gothamist

A new winter COVID-19 surge in New York City has temporarily shuttered more than two dozen restaurants, battering an industry that had only begun to claw its way back from a nearly two-year pandemic ordeal.

Almost all the restaurants that have closed have put up statements on Instagram explaining there are confirmed COVID-19 exposures among their staff, as the delta and omicron variants tear through the city. On Thursday, Eater compiled a list of a dozen of the restaurants, some of which have since reopened and some of which said they won't reopen for several days.

That number ballooned to at least 30 by Friday morning.

"It's a bummer to limp into the holiday break on such a difficult week for everyone," said Chef Dennis Ngo, who runs Greenpoint's Di An Di, which shut down Wednesday after one positive case on their team.

"We take this stuff very seriously," Ngo told Gothamist. "That necessitated us closing, and then we required everyone to go out and get tested. We were asking all of our team members to either get two rapid tests back-to-back on consecutive days, or one PCR test. And based on that, we would have felt comfortable opening if we had all of those results in for today, but we experienced a lot of testing challenges."

He said his 30 employees were met with long lines at testing locations around Greenpoint, and many sites ended up running out of rapid tests.

"Even the ones that got PCRs, they were promised results by the end of the day yesterday, and they still haven't seen results yet," he noted Thursday. Some tried to get home tests, but they "had to go to three or four pharmacies to get it. It became kind of a game yesterday of trying to find what was the fastest place or easiest way to get them rapid tests."

Ngo estimated the restaurant loses around $7,000-$9,000 each night it's closed. On top of that, they were already planning to close for two weeks at the end of the month starting next week to give their team a break from such a challenging year, so it's unclear whether they'll have the chance to reopen before then.

 So far, there are more than ten restaurants in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area that have shut down:Bernie's, Cozy Royale, Di An Di, We Got Company, Winonas, Thief, Frankel's Delicatessen, Pheasant, L'industrie Pizzeria, Misi, Lilia, Five Leaves, Four Horsemen. There were several more in other Brooklyn neighborhoods: LaLou, Love, Nelly, Nite Nite, Oxalis, Rialto Grande, Otway, Bar Meridian. Grand Army Bar and Ugly Baby both announced they would stay closed until the end of the year.

The surge has also hit places in Ridgewood, including The Acre (who recommended that anyone who went there this week get tested), Porcelain, and I Like Food (who said they would remain closed until after Christmas). Other restaurants that have shut down in various parts of the city include Temperance Wine Bar in the West Village, Bessou in the Lower East Side and Top Quality in Long Island City.

The Blaz now wants full vaccination status for participating in society

  

NY Daily News

A day after announcing five people in New York State tested positive for COVID’s omicron variant, Mayor de Blasio said Friday he is considering tightening vaccine mandates when it comes to restaurants and concert venues.

Such a mandate could include a second shot of the COVID vaccine, as well as boosters shots.

“With all of our approaches to COVID, we’re going to update them because we’re dealing with some new challenges,” he said. “We’re going to keep updating policies regularly to meet this challenge.”

De Blasio was responding to a question from WNYC’s Brian Lehrer about whether the city would require people seeking to eat indoors or attend concerts to show that they’ve been fully vaccinated — as opposed to providing proof of just one shot, which is the current requirement.

“That will be looked at along with a series of other actions because it’s really dynamic right now,” de Blasio said.

The mayor also pointed out that it is not just omicron he’s concerned about, but the spread of COVID’s delta variant in the winter months as well.

De Blasio, who is contemplating a gubernatorial run next year after he is term-limited out of office as mayor, was speaking a day after appearing alongside Gov. Hochul at City Hall on Thursday to alert New Yorkers that the heavily mutated omicron variant had found its way to the Empire State.

This idiot wanting to do this in the last hours of his abominable reign as mayor confirms that it's his and Davey Chokshi's fault that he elongated the COVID era by letting the Delta variant spread with the initial mandate.