New York City - New Mandates

[Gooseandamoose]

For anyone who hasn't seen it on the news, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio announced two new vaccine mandates yesterday for New York city

1. All private sector employees will have to be vaccinated without testing as a substitute. This is in addition to the mandates for many public sector workers that are already in place.

1. All children from 5 and up will have to be vaccinated with one shot to access indoor dining, museums and indoor entertainment venues. In addition, "Children between 5 and 11 will also be required to get vaccinated to participate in high-risk extracurricular activities. These activities include sports, band, orchestra, and dance. "

So that's pretty much everyone that will need to be vaccinated to work (unless self employed for the time being anyway) or do anything indoors in NYC, including kids from 5 and up.

Total insanity. Also going to scurper a lot of family holidays to NYC!

There goes our Eatster holiday…

*Easter

I think it’s a good thing.

I was just having a text chat with an old school friend who is a nurse in Manhattan. She reckons this is very widely supported in NYC.

Totally agree with mathanxiety. If people who live there are happy about it, what reason are there to complain as foreigners?

@mathanxiety our children can’t get the vaccine, that’s the problem so forgive us if we are fed up about having to cancel more plans and disappoint our children once again.

Great, kids will survive without going to indoor events until their parents parent them by getting them the vaccine.

[quote BunsyGirl]@mathanxiety our children can’t get the vaccine, that’s the problem so forgive us if we are fed up about having to cancel more plans and disappoint our children once again.[/quote]
If you kids can't get the vaccine, people aren't safe around them. They'll get over the disappointment and they won't kill anyone!

If you kids can't get the vaccine, people aren't safe around them.

What? Do you think people unable to be vaccinated should be kept away from other people?

Great. There goes our trip in the new year 🤦🏼‍♀️ Can’t get my 5 year old vaccinated here can I .. 😭

Why are we so behind everyone else?! If I move it to day May time, will there be any chance we’ll have got kids vaccinated by then here?! Or is NY a complete no go forever now?

@Bobholll Although it’s been approved for 5 and above by the European Medicines Agency I don’t think the roll out has started for 5-11’s in Europe yet so I don’t think we’re very behind on this.

@HelplesslyHoping

The vast majority of people will be perfectly safe around them.

Those who are vulnerable and not sufficiently protected by the vaccine won't be safe from infection around anyone or their kids, vaccinated or not. Omicron will be dominant soon and it doesn't seem to have much trouble infecting vaccinated people (in my experience, Delta doesn't either).

@BunsyGirl, with all respect, that's not a problem other people need to fix for you by putting themselves in harm's way so your family can have an outing.

Thousands of children in the poorest parts of NYC lost parents, grandparents and family members to covid when it first arrived. Now that the rent moratorium is over, hundreds of thousands of kids are living in overcrowded apartments of relatives, packed in like sardines, because their parents lost jobs when the city was overwhelmed by the virus and there were refrigerated trucks holding corpses. There are thousands of children in NYC whose nearest and dearest were buried in mass graves.

These vaccines are not without risk. How can you mandate something that will inevitably lead to life-changing injury or even death for even a minuscule number of children.

I’ve been pretty disgusted by many attitudes on here but this thread genuinely chills me.

@Louisa92, the problem isn't kids getting mild cases of covid.

The problem is kids with mild covid sneezing, coughing, and infecting adults who are trying to make a living and keep a roof over their families and food on their tables.

Children are virus vectors. That is why schools in my suburb and hundreds of others have mask mandates ( which some parents have been very precious about too).

@TinaYouFatLard, there is no proof and no indication that what you posted is true.

Your post is a fine example of the unreasonable and unfounded thinking of the anti vax cohort.

There is a high chance that unvaccinated groups allowed to spread covid - especially children - will result in more deaths from covid and virus mutation; an endless cycle of unnecessary death from covid and other diseases which hospitals can't deal with.

@SickAndTiredAgain, the protocol in the US is two shots for children, at least in my state.

There will probably be a booster for them too.

[quote mathanxiety]@SickAndTiredAgain, the protocol in the US is two shots for children, at least in my state.

There will probably be a booster for them too.[/quote]
So is NYC’s one shot rule for 5-11 year olds likely just temporary, to allow people time to get them both?

You may not know, which is fine, I’m only curious. It doesn’t affect me either way as I have a 2 year old DD, and no upcoming plans to visit America anyway.

@mathanxiety There is a risk of Myocarditis. That’s why the U.K. has taken a very cautious approach to vaccinating children. I’m no anti-vaxer. I have been fully vaccinated for months and in the past have paid for vaccinations for my children not available on the NHS. However, the option to vaccinate my children against Covid is not available right now in the U.K. and the delay in approval has arisen out of concerns that the benefit to children may not outweigh the risk to them. You seem to be concentrating on the wider benefit to society rather than the benefit to children themselves.

@mathanxiety And if there is a genuine concern about children passing it on to other people, it would be far better to require proof of a negative Covid test for entry as is an option in many European countries. Vaccinated people do still pass the virus on. The vaccine may lower the risk but it doesn’t stop it.

You seem to be concentrating on the wider benefit to society rather than the benefit to children themselves.

Like the benefit of keeping their families safe and well in their overcrowded apartments in an overcrowded city? Kids don't exist in a vacuum, the health and wellbeing of their families and their friends is vital to their well-being.

I feel there's a separate issue here that's not been mentioned

The state being able make a medical rule for private business employees.

I don't find any of this good, but I'm surprised that private firms don't object on the principle. To use another example, I imagine many US businesses wouldn't want maternity leave like we have here, this like opening a door to more government interference with business.

Didn't another state court say they couldn't mandate vaccines for federal employees? I guess there's huge variation over there.

1. All private sector employees will have to be vaccinated without testing as a substitute. This is in addition to the mandates for many public sector workers that are already in place.

Well that would be me unemployed if they brought it in here. I'm vaccinated but undecided about boosters. I will probably have this one but won't be having them regularly.

@luinagreine I am well aware that children don’t live in a vacuum but surely the health of the child has to be taken into account. I am explaining why vaccinating 5-11 year olds hasn’t been approved yet in the U.K. and we have only just approved a second dose for 12 year olds. Many children live in crowded conditions in the U.K. too but passing it onto adults (who should be vaccinated themselves) is not the only consideration.

[quote mathanxiety]@TinaYouFatLard, there is no proof and no indication that what you posted is true.

Your post is a fine example of the unreasonable and unfounded thinking of the anti vax cohort.

There is a high chance that unvaccinated groups allowed to spread covid - especially children - will result in more deaths from covid and virus mutation; an endless cycle of unnecessary death from covid and other diseases which hospitals can't deal with.

[/quote]
No vaccine is without risk.

However I think the emerging problem that we are seeing with the current covid vaccines is that they do not prevent infection and transmission. And the virus is mutating.

I think it is worrying that the new variant appears to have multiple mutations to the spike protein. And I think it begs the question is vaccination immunity giving such mutations a "competitive advantage" and allowing them to become dominant?

I don't know and I hope not but I can't help thinking that this whole thing is not as simple as;

vaccinated = good
unvaccinated = bad

Do human beings have experience of mass vaccination in a pandemic situation with a vaccine that does not prevent infection and transmission?

I don't believe for a second that our mass vaccination is having no effect on the evolution of the virus.

Which is not to say that I don't think the vaccines have their place. I think they do - in protecting vulnerable people from severe disease, hospitalization and death.

But I think mandatory vaccination of individuals who do not need the protection provided by vaccines is playing with fire. The virus will continue to mutate and vaccinated people will influence the "selected" mutations as much as unvaccinated people (if not more as there are now more of them).

And then we may be in trouble as to how to protect our vulnerable people if the mutations which emerge via adaptation to our vaccines are vaccine resistant.