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NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

iapps.courts.state.ny.us

301–310 of 443 posts

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#301
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, they were watching out for the health of other employees who had to work with employees that refused to do the most basic acts to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.

You're 100% bought into the propaganda. Isn't it time to pause and reflect? Btw. "the science" hasn't changed. The vaccine never stopped the spread. There were no studies indicating that it did (medical trials were about hospitalisations / death, not infections / spreading). You fell for the fake science propagated by fake news media.

That is a pretty disgusting statement. What ""the science"" are you talking about?

The vast majority of doctors and scientists strongly recommend taking the vaccine. It is not about stopping 100% of illnesses and infections, but it is 100% about significantly reducing the chance of hospitalisation and death.

What are you talking about? Sounds like the time to reflect is all yours.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of if they were the right thing to do, many of the various covid mandates being enacted through whatever form of decree really didn’t seem like they fit inside the authority of the government executives trying to enact them. Many were also made to be unenforceable so they’d never be tested in court while still influencing people. The rule of law is important and limiting the power of “rulers” to make large…

Us Americans are so obsessed with government overreach that you'd think our corporate overloads are actually treating us well and that the government is the bad guy. When the government wants to fuck us over, think what the NSA has been doing, they won't look for precedents so there's no point in treating every decision they make as a potential sliperry slope. Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so va…

> Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so vaccines must be required. Very simple.

This last sentence is such a massive slippery slope that an answer isn’t even necessary.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The etymology of vaccine comes from vacca, which is Latin for cow. Vaccines were originally discovered after finding that milkmaids seemed somehow immune to smallpox, which otherwise not only made people gravely ill but had a mortality rate upwards of 30%. The reason, it was discovered, is that they were regularly exposed to cowpox which sufficiently strengthened their immune systems to provide effective immunity to…

The etymological tidbit is but a distraction from the meat of the issue, which is that you are wrong. Namely, herd immunity absolutely does make vaccines work better, and is the basis of all vaccine policy in the modern world. I'm not even sure how you can state it's a tertiary effect when it is the primary reason vaccine policies exist. You're simply spreading misinformation. Herd immunity due to vaccination has res…

The entire point is that a smallpox vaccine does provide genuine immunity from smallpox to the point that was so apparent that we could casually observe even the tiniest micro-population (milkmaids) were somehow just completely immune. They didn't get it, they didn't spread it, and their immunity didn't just disappear in a few months or because of a slight genetic variation.

And, also critically, there is no non-human transmission vector for smallpox. It travels exclusively between humans, contrasted against COVID which thrives in both human and animal populations. So if you were unvaccinated and spent all your time around milkmaids - you would not become infected, because there was no vector for the disease to get to you. If 90% of your company were milkmaids, you may get it if one of the other unvaccinated was infected, but the odds would be reduced. This is what herd immunity refers to.

You can observe the effects of 'herd immunity' with the current COVID vaccines in places such as Gibraltar. They achieved greater than 100% vaccination rates, and early on, by vaccinating not only their entire population, but even a large number of migrant workers. They ended up with a death rate of 3,204 per million contrasted against 3,266 for the US. And their infection rate was one of the highest in the world at nearly 60%, but that was probably more so due to extensive testing than greater susceptibility.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were fired for cause, namely, insubordination The idea that you can order someone to perform a medical procedure because they work for you is disguisting. Where does this end?

What happens when a virus comes along that kills at a higher rate, say 35%? You're saying people should be willing to work alongside others when there is a 35% chance of a pandemic level virus killing you because a peer thinks science is dumb?

I think you've gotten your hypothetical scenario a bit scrambled.

Given a safe and effective vaccine, you and your vaccinated coworkers would either not become infected at all or would experience very mild symptoms and be left with supercharged immunity (immunity from your vaccine + immunity from infection). Your dumb, science-hating coworker would suffer much worse symptoms and maybe die (a little over 1 in 3 chance given the 35% fatality you postulate).

Your vaccine, first and foremost, is supposed to protect you.

But with covid that is not at all what we are seeing.

This was especially painfully clear in places with strongly-enforced "vaccine passport" regimes during the period they were in force before being abandoned. The vaccinated spent time with other vaccinated and were infecting and being infected by one another and birthing new, more transmissible vaccine-evading variants of the virus. Vaccine efficacy actual goes negative (i.e. vaccine recipients more susceptible than unvaccinated persons after a few months: "Vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron or Delta variants following a two-dose or booster BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccination series: A Danish cohort study" https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v...) and vaccine recipients are infected and infectious for at least as long as unvaccinated persons (e.g. "Duration of Shedding of Culturable Virus in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (BA.1) Infection" in NEJM https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35767428/).

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#305
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you willingly refuse to get vaccinated, and are thus more likely to catch and spread COVID, shouldn't we make you pay for any lives you've contributed to taking away?

The effectiveness of the vaccines in terms of preventing spread weren't studied, per pharmaceutical company testimony to congress. The whole notion that you getting the vaccine would prevent grandma from dying was a whole-cloth fabrication.

And if they were, would that change the ethical calculation here?

If we had a sterilizing vaccine, and you refused to take it, and got me sick, could I hold you responsible?

I'm just trying to understand exactly to what extent other people's selfish choices should be allowed to endanger my life and livelihood.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#306
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was arbitrary because small hardware stores had to close, while big ones could stay open. Also, because in most states someone in the governor’s office just went down a random list of professions or business types and decided on the spot whether to shut them down or not. That’s the very definition of arbitrary and capricious. It also fails the rational basis test, since the government hadn’t even come up with a ra…

Then why?

Then why what? Can you elaborate a bit?

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, that's the point. The mandate presumably would have been legal if Adams hadn't added those arbitrary exemptions.

Doubt it. The court also said the following (court towards the end indicates that the mandate didn’t make sense even when the order was issued): > “”Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19. As of the day of this Decision, CDC guidelines regarding quarantine and isolation are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The Petitioners should not have been ter…

> Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19.

This was not true before Omicron. Vaccination was never a 100% protection against contracting or transmitting SARS-CoV-2, but it did significantly reduce the rate of both. People who refused to vaccinate themselves were, in fact, putting people around them at greater risk.

That protection has decreased with Omicron, though it is still not zero (and with boosters, it increases again for a few months).

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#308
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is important to understand that not all people who against vax mandates are anti-vaxers.

I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree. Vaccines offer some personal protection but predominantly become effective by achieving herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy undermines this goal and weakens the system. Being pro-vaccine is senseless without being in favor of enough people being vaccinated to provide strong immunity, including for those who cannot be vaccinated due to medical complications. Even…

The problem is that this is a very first mandate for vaccination we ever imposed on ordinary people.

The US has very complex society and diverse population, so mandates do not work and might create backclash.

I think mass vaccination can be easily achieved by mass marketing. Mandates just made this way too political: and as we can see did not achieve a thing.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happened in CA with some stores being open and others closed. Why was Home Depot open? It made no sense in terms of spreading the disease . It was just arbitrary BS. Closing the beaches was stupid too. If there ever was a safe place then it was the beach or state park wheee uou are in the open and the window blows.

People were rabidly cheering it on too. Police going around shutting playgrounds and arresting parents for playing outdoors with their children, while at the same time the politicians they voted for were constantly and egregiously shown to be flouting the rules on frivolities, parties, travel, fun. And there were excuses for the politicians and bloodlust for the commoner trying to exercise or raise their child. Absol…

You've got cause and effect backwards. Societies have to overreact to pandemics, because those that didn't got wiped out - eventually. Enforcement of quarantine and similar measures through extreme social norms is a necessary adaptation to the threat of plague; civilization wouldn't be able to exist without it.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric Adams' "performers and sports players" exemption was specifically to allow Broadway to re-open and to allow Kyrie Irving to play in Brooklyn. The whole thing was a farce anyway so it doesn't matter.

It wasn't Kyrie, it was the Yankees. The opening came just before the start of the MLB season but well into the NBA season.

Rumor was Aaron Judge, the Yankee's biggest star, was unvaccinated. He personally sidestepped question about vaccine status and the team had publicly said a few (two?) players on a Yankees hadn't had their shots. Before opening day there were questions about if Judge would be able to play in New York.

The whole thing ended up being a mute point, because everyone on the starting roster[1] eventually got their shots so they could travel to Canada to play the Blue Jays.

[1] they later traded for an unvaccinated player

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/sports/baseball/aaron-jud...

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