Mayor Remains 110% Convinced Private Sector Vaccine Mandate “the Right Thing to Do”

By Yehudit Garmaise

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mandate for small business owners to require their workers to get vaccinated went into effect today, however, Mayor-elect Eric Adams has said that he plans to “make changes” to that mandate.

 “Mayor-elect Adams wants to make sure small businesses are able to survive,” a reporter pointed out at the mayor’s press conference this morning. “[Adams] says small businesses face a very different reality than large corporations, so given that these are your final few days in office, do you see any merit to changing the approach based on the sizes of businesses [in New York City]?

 “My job is to protect people, so I am 110% convinced this was the right thing to do, it remains the right thing to do: particularly with the ferocity of Omicron," Mayor de Blasio responded. “I don’t know whether there is going to be another variant behind it, but I do know our best defense is to get everyone vaccinated, and the mandates have worked.”

 “We believe this [number], which just went up intensely, is going to peak very soon, but today’s report is a staggering figure,” the mayor said of the 17,334 new reported COVID cases and 296 patients who were admitted to New York City hospitals.

 [The high, 7.69% positivity rate in the city] is a powerful, powerful reminder how important it is to get everyone vaccinated and boosted as quickly as possible,” the mayor said. “Our hospitals are holding it together here in the city. G-d bless everyone, our healthcare heroes who are doing that work.”

 Mayor de Blasio, who said he is “very comfortable with what we are doing,” also said that he “totally respects whatever the mayor-elect wants to do when he takes office, but this is the right thing to do to protect all New Yorkers.

"[Adams] will make his own decisions and speak for himself. Like [the mayor-elect] does, I believe that small businesses have been through a lot challenges, but I also believe that ultimately, the mandates benefit the small businesses: not only at the health level, but" helps businesses to retain employees.

 “Obviously, I care deeply about small businesses,” the mayor said. “But the most important thing we can do for small businesses is to end the COVID-era.

 “Get us out of this, and obviously: protect everyone, protect the people who work for small businesses, own them, and their customers.

 When further questioned on why he chose to mandate the city’s 184,000 small businesses, just as large corporations were mandates, the mayor explained that he believes that in terms of mandates: “The more universal the better: not just legally, but to create parity among all the different industries, all different size businesses.”

 Business leaders with whom the mayor has met were worried that if only some businesses were mandated, then employees who are are vaccine-hesitant would simply choose to work at different companies or in different fields that do not require vaccination, the mayor said.

 “A lot of businesspeople said to us early on: ‘If you are going to do a mandate, please make sure it is universal as possible, so people would know it is time to get that vaccine,’” explained the mayor, who did not want to allow for any loopholes in his mandate.

 Georgia Pestana, the mayor’s corporate counsel, said about the legality of the vaccine mandates that she had a large role in designing, “As always, we have always been guided by the health professionals, and there is no difference [of COVID risk] among employees who work for large employers than workers who work for small employers.

 “All workers are all at-risk [to COVID], and there is no public health reason to distinguish the two. The stronger the public health reason, the stronger we are able in defending any [legal] challenges.”

 The city has not yet been sued about the private sector vaccine mandate, but Pestana said, if she were to be faced with “legal challenges,” she “thinks [the city] would prevail because the mandate is grounded in solid public health advice and reasoning, and that reasoning goes across all sizes and businesses.”

 Of the more than 13 million times a New Yorker has come forward to get vaccinated, the mayor called that effort, “a little acts of hope, a small achievement that ripples outward: more than 13 million times.

 “Every time a New Yorker has come forward to get vaccinated, someone was there to give them that vaccination,” the mayor said. “Someone cared, and someone helped them: talk about those ripples of hope.”

Photo: Flickr