John,
Yesterday, the Mayor announced that City health workers will be required to get vaccinated by September.
As Covid-19 cases rise again, I am supportive of requiring vaccination (or a recent negative Covid test) for some activities and jobs. We need to have a thoughtful conversation about it, and fast.
We can and should continue to scale up vaccine outreach, focusing especially on trusted messengers in communities that are skeptical of state health care directives, and 12-18 year olds who will be returning to schools in the fall.
But it’s naive at this point to believe that we will get to the level of vaccination necessary without requirements.
San Francisco is going further than the Mayor’s new announcement, requiring all municipal employees to get vaccinated. After France announced that either a vaccine pass or a negative Covid-19 test would be required to go to a movie, club, or restaurant, 2.2 million people signed up for appointments in 48 hours.
NYC should consider similar requirements for recreational activities (everything is streaming on Netflix; to go to a theater, you should get vaccinated) and municipal jobs that interact with people, like hospitals, police, and schools.
We would need to do it in ways that truly protect people’s privacy -- paper vaccine cards, continued universal, free access to vaccines. We can maintain an option for regular testing as an alternative.
I’m still wearing my mask in indoor public places, and I’m open to a return to mask mandates. But we know that mass vaccination is what we need to end the pandemic’s ongoing toll on our city, our economy, and our communities.
There would be a backlash, I know. We’re so polarized, and we have so little social trust. But wouldn’t trust best be restored by crushing the virus, so we can really re-open?
And wouldn’t it be badly weakened by a renewed death toll that follows the unequal lines of vaccination?
I take the work of protecting the civil liberties of New Yorkers seriously, so I don’t say this lightly. But it’s pretty clear that our freedoms would be expanded, not contracted, if required vaccines and negative tests can help us crush the very real and dangerous risk of a new wave of the pandemic.
It’s time to start the conversation on vaccine requirements.
Brad
