Police unions, business groups protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates

Police officer in crosswalk
Police officer in crosswalk

Elvert Barnes / Flickr cc

From the New York City Police Department to the National Retail Federation, unions and other groups are asking for more time to implement COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

In New York, the city's largest police union asked a judge yesterday to allow unvaccinated police officers to continue working after the city's Nov 1 vaccine mandate deadline has passed, the New York Times reports. The lawsuit says the city has not given officers enough time to seek religious exemptions.

New York City municipal workers are required to have at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Nov 1. The Police Benevolent Association of New York, located in Staten Island, argued that police officers who do not want to be vaccinated should be offered the chance to test weekly for the virus.

Similar situations were seen earlier this month in Chicago and Washington state, where police unions clashed with mayors and other local officials who pushed for municipal vaccine requirements.

The New York Times reports that approximately 70% of the city's police force is vaccinated.

Businesses warn mandates will hurt supply chain

In related news, the National Retail Federation and the American Trucking Association are pleading with the Biden administration to delay the vaccine mandate for private companies until after the holiday season, CNBC reports.

President Joe Biden has instructed the Labor Department to require vaccines for all businesses with 100 or more employees. Both groups warned that if employees quit due to vaccine mandates it would only exacerbate existing employment and supply chain issues.

The associations are asking the federal government to allow 90 days for the mandate to take place, pushing the deadline through mid-January and after a holiday rush.

Though as many as 30% of unvaccinated workers say they will quit if forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine, many companies said most do not, and mandates increase employee uptake.

Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King said today in a company statement that over 96% of Tyson employees are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, days ahead of the Nov 1 deadline. More than 60,000 workers have been vaccinated since the requirement was announced in August.

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker shows 57.4% of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, 66.4% have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 7% of fully vaccinated people have received a booster shot.

Americans struggle with pandemic stress

Americans are struggling with the basic decisions required to navigate daily life as the effects of pandemic-related stress continue to take a toll, especially on younger adults and parents, according to a national survey from the American Psychological Association.

According to the poll, 32%, or one in three, Americans are so stressed about the pandemic they struggle to make basic, daily decisions; 63% of adults agreed that uncertainty about what the next few months will bring causes them stress.

Millennials and Generation Z, or young adults from 18 to 42, report more stress than Baby Boomers or older Americans.

And in more evidence that the pandemic has affected races differently in America, more than 55% of Black and Latino households have reported serious financial problems due to the pandemic, compared with 29% of white families, according to a new poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Other US developments

  • A recent surge in daily COVID-19 cases and deaths, along with few public health restrictions and pockets of vaccine resistance among the elderly, has health officials in Arizona worried about the winter, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

  • The Department of Health and Human Services yesterday announced several new actions to help reduce the costs of at-home COVID-19 tests, make tests more available, and bring more tests to market. 

  • Yesterday the country recorded 70,291 COVID-19 cases, including 1,441 deaths, according to the tracker maintained by the New York Times.

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