This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated July 30, 2021
On Monday, July 26, an anti-mask rally was held outside a Staten Island public school. Councilman Joe Borelli and Staten Island Borough President candidate Vito Fossella spoke at the event, demanding that masks no longer be required in schools.
A flyer promoting the rally had cited false claims that children who wear masks suffer from oxygen deprivation and dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide. Fossella specifically promoted the untrue carbon monoxide claim in his remarks, stating that it had been reported in “a study released by a prestigious organization.” He was referring to a study that The Journal of the American Medical Association had retracted ten days earlier due to its inaccuracies.
Everyone is more comfortable without a mask. I wish my children did not have to contend with the prospect of full school days with masks on when they return to school this September, but it is needed and no matter what false information and fear mongering is out there, the fact of the matter is that needing to wear a mask is a necessary inconvenience, nothing more.
On the same day as the anti-mask rally, Mayor de Blasio announced a mandate requiring all 300,000 city workers be vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus tests. Also on that day, the Department of Justice issued an opinion stating that federal law does not prohibit private companies or public agencies from requiring their employees to be vaccinated.
The following day, the CDC revised its guidelines, recommending that all people, including those who are vaccinated, wear masks indoors or in public settings in high transmission areas. Their updated guidance also stated that all people, children and adults, should wear masks in K-12 schools.
“I just do not understand the mistrust and politicization… I do not get the motivation behind the misinformation that is only meant to divide.”
Anthony Almojera, Lieutenant Paramedic and Vice President of the FDNY’s EMS Officers’ Union – Local 3621
It does not matter how many rallies against masks are held or how earnestly some people declare they will never get the vaccine. Mandates for both will become more widespread specifically because those who are resisting these proven public health measures are driving the spread of COVID-19 again and making public spaces increasingly unsafe.
I spoke with Anthony Almojera, Lieutenant Paramedic and Vice President of the FDNY’s EMS Officers’ Union – Local 3621, about this. As part of union leadership, he has legitimate concerns about the Mayor’s new mandate. While Almojera said he “encourages everyone to get vaccinated, mask up, and get tested,” he also has concerns about the logistics of the new requirements, being that de Blasio did not outline a detailed process.
If an EMS worker, firefighter or teacher is not vaccinated and must be tested weekly, who pays for the tests? On whose time is the testing done? If family obligations prevent a worker from getting one weekly test in time, what results from that? These are questions that need to be dealt with so that a system that is effective, fair, and reasonable can be implemented. As Henry Garrido, Executive Director of District Council 37, NYC’s largest municipal employees’ union, put it in a recent tweet, “We are not bargaining over testing or vaccination. We are in full support of vaccination. We are bargaining over its impact on the workers.”
Almojera recounted to me that during the worst span of the pandemic last year, he saw “more people die in two months than he had in the previous five to seven years on the job.” In addition to all those patients he saw succumb to COVID-19, Anthony has had ten co-workers die from the virus and numerous others who survived it, become COVID long-haulers, who continue to deal with lingering effects.
Almojera said he does “not understand the mistrust and politicization” which has caused “an information disconnect,” adding that he does “not get the motivation behind the misinformation that is only meant to divide.”
There was complete consensus last year during the height of the outbreak, when ambulance sirens were a constant each night here in New York City, that the EMS workers making those calls at great risk to themselves were selfless heroes. Anthony Almojera pointed out on July 25 that they city was “up to 4500 EMS calls a day.” Anyone choosing to not get vaccinated now is being selfish and putting those heroes at risk again.
