New York City sets sweeping vaccine mandate for all private employers.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. What kind of argument are you trying to make?

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".