Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to increase vaccine mandates to children under five years old is too quick, unnecessary coercive and unpractical. This policy expands upon Hizzoner’s prior rulePrivate companies are now required to ensure that all employees have been fully immunized before they can work in an office environment. This changes the definition. Completely vaccinatedIt is no longer enough to require one shot. And—inspiring perhaps the most ire of all—it forces parents to vaccinate children ages 5–11 if they want to bring the kids to any indoor restaurant, fitness center, or entertainment venue. On December 27, the mandate for private workers and the change in definitions for what qualifies as vaccinated, will take effect. Children’s vaccine mandate takes effect December 14.
Lisa is a Manhattan mom, who says she just feels angry and coerced to comply with an unwritten mandate given by an outgoing mayor. Lisa was planning on Broadway performances and museum tours this winter with her kids (5 and 7). “All my family members have been fully vaccinated. All of our children received their childhood vaccines when they were due. Both myself and my husband have COVID vaccinations and we’ve been in this state since early April.” She adds that she is firmly on the “wait-and-see” camp regarding vaccines for children. Lisa requested that her last name not be used for fear of reprisal.
“With this EUA [emergency use authorization]Lisa says that the trial included 3,000 participants and only three months worth of trial time.” “So to compare the COVID-19 vaccines to other childhood vaccines…I don’t think it’s accurate.” It was found that the vaccine to prevent polio had been tested in 1 million children over 10 years. The results showed that they both cause severe harm to kids. “Polio was a deadly disease that was seriously affecting more children…COVID doesn’t present as seriously or as deadly for children.”
This is exactly right. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2009, there have been fewer than 700 deaths from COVID among children. There were 146 cases for those younger.
De Blasio’s mandate is set to be implemented just in the midst of winter, effectively preventing families without unvaccinated kids from engaging in city life. But it’s not just that it will make it impossible for some families to go out together; such extracurriculars as sports, orchestra, and dance have been instructed to require that kids in this age group be vaccinated or else be thrown out of their after-school activities—those same ones they took an involuntary, collective hiatus from for much of 2020.
Eli Klein owns and manages The eponymous gallery of artThe West Village is home to contemporary Chinese art. Reason He’s concerned about how the rule will affect travelers. He says that the main effect of it on his gallery will be the decline in NYC tourist. “Kids are not vaccinated everywhere in the world. Many don’t even want to do COVID vaccinations yet. These families will move elsewhere.”
“We dine out on a regular basis. Yiatin Chu is a Manhattan resident with her 10-year-old girl. She also spends time in Queens with family members, often dining out 3 times per weekend. Chu was able to get her COVID vaccinations immediately after she became eligible. However, Chu is now in wait-and-see mode.The risk of becoming severely ill in hildren is very low.”
“I always consider the benefits and risks of anything. To me the risk of getting a vaccine is extremely small, so I don’t see the upside of jumping at the chance to get one that is available for immediate use in this age group,” she said, noting that her son has had all of the other vaccines since childhood.
The mandate of de Blasio, which he describes as a means of avoiding winter-month lockdowns and other restrictions, is difficult to enforce. Most children do not have photo IDs that could be used with their vaccination cards to prove identity. A policy like this one could also end up having a racially discriminatory impact; only 24 percent of New York kids aged 5–17 who are black are vaccinated, and only 15 percent of the total pool of vaccinated kids are between the ages of 5 and 12. If the choices of black families are similar to the citywide ones regarding vaccination, it could be extrapolated that about 7 percent are fully vaccinated in the five boroughs between 5 and 12. This is possible because the vaccination rate for blacks may actually be lower than the other races. Lisa says that the average number of black New Yorker children who are vaccinated is lower than that of their white counterparts. Instead of giving up and letting state health care decisions be made for them, they “w…”Chu jokes about how they are changing the way we patronize restaurants and says that it’s now time to buy better cookware.
The “pre-emptive strikes,” as de Blasio refers to them, offer a false choice between coercive orders from the government to get vaccinated or coercive orders for businesses to lock down again. Considering that 90 percent (and more) of New York’s adults have had at least one vaccine dose, none of these are necessary. In fact, the overall city death rate has plummeted among those who choose to be vaccinated. It’s as if de Blasio wants to be seen as presenting residents with carrots, not sticks, when in reality both mandates and lockdown orders are sticks—sticks applied to precisely the demographic group the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned policy makers to be careful with: kids.
Lisa points out that Finland and Britain have decided to not vaccinate children under 5 years old for the moment. Lisa also notes that the FDA granted emergency authorizations to five- to eleven-year-olds, specifically stating that they didn’t want widespread vaccination mandates.
She said, “Here are we having de Blasio flip around and do exactly what the panel foresaw would be done.” “I do not want to feel as if my kids will be the guineapigs.”
De Blasio had already attempted to force the unvaccinated to be vaccinated in August. He created an underclass of citizens who are barred from normal city living. It was not something that many expected. He’d brazenly use all of his powers to make a new sub-class out of those who are least at risk from the virus.