New York City sets sweeping vaccine mandate for all private employers.
Source: New York Times
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a sweeping Covid vaccine mandate for all private employers in New York City on Monday morning to combat the spread of the Omicron variant. Mr. de Blasio said the aggressive measure, which takes effect Dec. 27 and which he described as the first of its kind in the nation, was needed as a “pre-emptive strike” to stall another wave of coronavirus cases and help reduce transmission during the winter months and holiday gatherings.
“Omicron is here, and it looks like it’s very transmissible,” he said in an interview on MSNBC. “The timing is horrible with the winter months.” New York City has already put vaccine mandates in place for city workers and for indoor dining, entertainment and gyms. Nearly 90 percent of adults in the city now have at least one dose of the vaccine. But Mr. de Blasio said the city must go further to combat another wave of the virus in New York City, once the epicenter of the pandemic.
Some private employers have required employees to get vaccinated, but many others have not. The mayor also announced that the rules for dining and entertainment would apply to children ages 5 to 11, starting on Dec. 14, and the requirement for adults will increase from one dose of a vaccine to two starting on Dec. 27. Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul held a news conference last Thursday to announce New York State’s first five cases of the Omicron variant.
The number of coronavirus cases in the city has increased rapidly in recent weeks; daily case counts have increased more than 75 percent since Nov. 1. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat with less than a month left in office, said he was confident the new mandate would survive any legal challenges.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/nyregion/nyc-vaccine-mandate-deblasio.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
and that includes children who are legally not PERMITTED to "work" but they are being required to get vaccinated (outside of qualified exemptions). 
New York city alone has approx. 1.7 million children under 18.
The articles have noted is that the initial mandate was for city employees and now has moved to private industry, noting that although many businesses have gone ahead and required it already, others have not. And in general, those who work, are often "working with the public" and/or with other co-workers (or other people doing maintenance operations at their worksites), and thus have the highest risk of spreading the virus.
You will lose in court attempting to get those who are medically exempted to be forced to be vaccinated. And if someone is "home bound" (including the disabled) or in a hospitals (including probably hundreds of thousands or more who may be in comas or sedated for medical reasons) who would never "go out", and thus would be less likely to spread anything, the decision to vaccinate based on their medical conditions, is up to the medical officials.
Nowhere does it say any of the categories of people that you list are "exempted". The limitations on where they could go IF they leave their homestead, mandates that they be vaccinated, and thus captures a bigger population of "others" who would be in position to spread the virus due to their activities but are not necessarily employed.
A vaccine (Pfizer's) was only approved for EUA literally what will be a year ago, 5 days from today. From that time through to the end of February 2021, 2 more vaccines were approved under their own EUAs.
At that point, the whole vaccination process required actual production of enough doses to start distribution, and then prioritization of who could get one. So it wasn't until nearly the summer of 2021 when enough doses were available and the most vulnerable could even get one. And children under 16 were not eligible.
Then as of this past August, that same initial EUA-approved Pfizer vaccine finally gained approval of their BLA (Biologics License Application), although the other 2 have still not had their BLAs approved yet. Plus children 12 - 17 were finally approved under a EUA for Pfizer's vaccine.
So once a BLA was in hand, a "mandates" could be more legally enforceable for BLA-approved vaccines and that triggered the mandates for the federal government (including the military), meaning comply, get exemption, or face some designated penalty. But again, that didn't happen until after August of this year.
The mandates are meant to slow the spread of this virus at the source - those most likely to spread it, and put some teeth behind doing so. You will never capture everyone but as long as the transmission rate (R0) is below 1, you are ahead. And in the case of NYC, their initial "mandate" for city employees resulted in at least 91% compliance rate (which I believe a poster upthread was probably referring to), with those not submitting or qualifying for an exemption, put on unpaid leave. That NYC city employee mandate also came with agreements with the various unions to make it so.
So given that using a "mandate" for (city) government employees resulted in general success because it captured a subset of people who had not previously voluntarily received a vaccine, the next step was to mirror what Biden did - after requiring vaccines for federal employees first (with qualified exemptions taken into consideration), there was a move to mandates for private industry as the next step.
How that plays out in the court is up in the air for doing this federally, as they have upheld (including Sotomayor's neglecting to halt NYC's initial mandates) at the state/local levels. So what NYC is doing would actually provide a backstop to what DOL has in place for a federal mandate rule for businesses over 100 which may get thrown out in court. And given they are the largest city, by population, in the U.S., that is significant.
If your argument is that this is nothing but a "bold policy statement" then that is what you believe our Democratic President has done as well - nothing but "a bold policy statement".
This is because "legally", past precedent has directed that DOL regulate the "health and safety" of the workplace and apply different guidelines based on the type of business (and number of employees). The "greater than 100" is one of those categories and captures a good chunk of people who are often in "public-facing" occupations (e.g., working in an office building, at an office park or are in a warehouse, manufacturing plant, or are in the large hospitality industry, working in hotels or are in the travel industry, including air travel/ship travel, etc).
Bottom line is that many people closely working together are most at risk of spreading a contagious virus to the largest number of people in one location. Basically they can generate a "super spreader event" just within their workplaces.
Last year, you had meat-processing plants like Smithfield, closing at least 3 plants due to infections. Just from their SD plant outbreak, they indicated this -
The meat processing company said multiple employees at the plants tested positive for COVID-19.
By Alexa Lardieri | April 16, 2020, at 4:13 p.m.
(snip)
The Associated Press reported that 518 employees in the South Dakota plant and an additional 126 people connected to them have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
(snip)
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-04-16/meat-processor-smithfield-foods-closes-two-more-plants-following-coronavirus-concerns
So with any type of large facility where you have hundreds who are working together, getting them vaccinated early on reduces the spread, both among themselves, to their families, but also to the "small businesses" that support those big plants who have less than 100 employees (like the local take-out places or bars, etc). In other words, you can euphemistically knock out a large number of potential "spreaders" by focusing on large businesses first.
This also allows for easier "delegation of enforcement" to the company itself rather than the regulator because a mandate can often exact a penalty against the employer for non-compliance.
I posted upthread, that De Blasio was going to release how the city will handle "small businesses" later. Will repost with just that mention -
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the expansion Monday amid yet another COVID surge driving case rates up across the five boroughs
Published 2 hours ago • Updated 18 mins ago
(snip)
He said the city will issue additional enforcement and reasonable accommodation guidance to support small businesses with implementation on Dec. 15, about a week and a half before the mandate takes effect.
(snip)
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/nyc-mulls-tougher-vaccine-mandate-amid-covid-19-surge/3434858/
Regarding this -
So, what portion of the unvaccinated population will the new mandate by DeBlasio actually target ?
* People that are employed by private employers smaller than 100, who don't eat at restaurants, go to any indoor fitness activities, or watch any indoor entertainment. Perhaps that is a significant number of people, but I seriously doubt it.
Based on the above points, IMO, this new announcement is going to have a negligible effect on the vaccination rates.
Remember, this is New York City and not Michigan. The population of the city proper itself at 8.8 million, is only about 1 million LESS than the entire population of Michigan, which is 10 million. Other than the outer boroughs with a mix of housing stock, the most densely populated areas in Manhattan and Queens, have a heavy draw to those very places that were listed that are the most risky to be - particularly when unvaccinated. And those smaller businesses support all those people working in the many skyscrapers there.
All of this is being done to avoid another shutdown. The types of businesses mentioned that are now mandating proof of vaccination were the very businesses that were shutdown a year ago because this is where the most spread occurred (outside of the unfortunate circumstances in the long-term care facilities and prisons).
They actually had been doing that. Just like here in Philly, the Health Department (along with municipal Departments who regulate the full suite of the different types of businesses that fall under them) do routine "inspections", using a checklist of things that those businesses are expected to comply with. This just gets added onto the checklist.
A year ago when they shut everything down, when they were notified of non-compliance, they went after them. For example, a year ago this week -
By Spectrum News Staff and Lindsay Tuchman Staten Island
UPDATED 8:56 PM ET Dec. 02, 2020 PUBLISHED 10:43 PM ET Dec. 01, 2020
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - The owner of Mac's Public House on Staten Island blasted the city Wednesday for shutting down his bar and arresting his general manager.
“It’s outrageous, it’s outrageous, plain and simple,” Keith McAlarney said.
On Tuesday night, deputy New York City sheriffs closed the Grant City pub and arrested manager Daniel Presti for blatantly violating orders put in place to curb the rising number of coronavirus cases on Staten Island.
The bar was closed to business Wednesday. Eight NYC sheriff officers were spotted guarding the entrance Wednesday afternoon, and additional officers were spotted later in the evening.
(snip)
Link to tweet
(snip)
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/12/02/mac-s-public-house-co-owner-arrested-covid-19
TWEET TEXT
@AnchorAngi
More than 100 protestors have shows up @ #MacsPublicHouse on #StatenIsland - it’s closed entirely now after the general manager & others were arrested Tues. 4 violating the state’s #COVIDー19 regulations for restaurants in orange zone. The @NYCSHERIFF has 8 officers here @NY1
Image
5:49 PM · Dec 2, 2020
Seems you don't know how government entities work and assume it's just people who sit at a desk and twiddle their thumbs?
Here is a list of all the functions that operate under the city of NY, and their employees generally have some regulatory and/or service and/or support role that touches on everything that goes on in the city under their jurisdiction - https://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/agencies.page
The state of NY has similar functions that touch on all the counties in the state including those that are part of metro NYC.
then there is this option (you might recall this when Crispy Creme was NJ governor) -
Of course we know 6 years later, he was part of what became a super-spreader event at the WH.
By Josh Hicks
October 7, 2014
The growing Ebola outbreak in West Africa has raised questions about how the U.S. government should respond to the epidemic. President Obama on Monday found himself at odds with leading Republicans over how to deal with the issue after a Liberian man was hospitalized with the deadly virus last week in Dallas.
Obama said he would increase passenger screenings in the United States and Africa to detect the disease, but he resisted calls from key GOP lawmakers to impose a strict ban on air travel from countries most affected by the outbreak. Let’s take a look at how the U.S. government has used quarantines to limit outbreaks.
(snip)
1921: The quarantine system becomes fully nationalized when administration of the last non-federal quarantine station is transferred to the U.S. government, according to the CDC.
1944: The Public Health Service Act gives the federal government a more robust quarantine authority, giving the Public Health Service responsibility for “preventing the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States,” according to the CDC.
1967: The CDC, then known as the Communicable Disease Center, takes over federal quarantine stations and functions, which had fallen under the purview of the Federal Security Agency since 1939.
1970-2000: The CDC reduces the number of quarantine stations from 55 to eight in the 1970s because the threat of infectious diseases is thought to be a thing of the past, according to the CDC. By 1995, all U.S. ports of entry are covered by seven quarantine stations, but another one was added in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, just before the 1996 Summer Olympics.
2004–2007: The CDC increases the number of quarantine stations to 20 due to concerns about post-9/11 bioterrorism and the 2003 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, also known as SARS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2014/10/07/a-brief-history-of-quarantines-in-the-united-states/
There were all kinds of discussions surrounding what happened in 2014 and the downside - https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/forced-quarantines-epidemics-ebola-poor.html and further back in history - https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-typhoid-mary
As a note - there was nothing that NYC did that mandated for anyone who is not working (I actually heard that on the radio this morning although none of the articles I saw really touched on it). But it restricts where anyone working or not can go if unvaccinated (and often offers caveats of masking if there is a medical/religious exemption). I think the point is to buy time to get the rate of spread down, and that will reduce the number of mutations that might happen.
Also probably half or more of DU is "old folks", many who are retired (I am retired). So as a number of health commentators have explained - it all boils down to how "risk averse" one is but also how "risk averse" society is too.
