Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Well, today may be an intense day in the world because of COP26, because of the Texas abortion law being argued at the Supreme Court today. Also here in New York City, at least 20,000 government employees, including firefighters, police officers, and sanitation workers are not going to work because they did not get the COVID-19 vaccine as required by the city. The deadline to get the shot and claim a $500 bonus was Friday at 5:00 PM. Workers who did not get at least one vaccination dose are now on unpaid leave.

According to the mayor, there has been significant progress. Tens of thousands of city workers have been inoculated since de Blasio announced the mandate and eliminated the alternative for weekly testing. He announced that on October 20th, with the deadline of this past Friday, bringing the total percentage of the city workers in the vaccinated category to about 91% as of yesterday. That's pretty good. With greater compliance, it is unclear just how much city services like trash pickup, ambulance, and fire response times might suffer in the coming days and weeks as unions have warned defending their members right not to get the shot.

What does 9% of the workforce out especially if they're concentrated in the frontline services like ambulances and firefighters and police officers and sanitation workers? With me now to see what's happening today and talk about the numbers are Elizabeth Kim, senior editor for Gothamist and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, data reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Liz, welcome back to the show. Jaclyn, welcome. This is your first time coming on our show since you came to the newsroom a few months ago. We're very happy to have you.

Elizabeth Kim: Morning, Brian.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Morning. Thank you so much, happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners are you not at work today, because you decided not to get vaccinated? How are you feeling about your choice, and where do you see yourself going from here? 212-433 WNYC or maybe you did get the shot under the wire in the last few days before Friday at 5:00 PM. Why were you resisting, and what made you finally decide to comply last minute and how are you feeling now? 212-433-9692. I'd be interested too in hearing from other firefighters and police officers and sanitation workers and ambulance drivers, EMTs, EMS workers, and anybody else in city government who more readily got your vaccines.

How do you feel about your co-workers? What kinds of conversations is the 90% having about the 10%, the 91% according to the official stat having about the 9% who are the refusers right now? I wonder if you feel like in a certain sense with the pandemic beginning to recede in New York, largely because of the vaccination rate, if they're freeloaders on everybody else who are getting vaccinated and chasing the pandemic, and they're not getting vaccinated or any other attitude that you have toward them or conversation that you're having with those workers, or just among your vaccinated colleagues. 212-433 WNYC 212-433-9692.

Liz, Gothamist has been crunching the numbers and getting the most up-to-date numbers from the city as well. Set the scene. How significant is the amount of people not showing up to work today, and what kinds of impact on services are we seeing if it's not too early to say?

Elizabeth Kim: There's been an update as of this morning. The mayor is holding his press conference as we speak. The expectation as of last night was that there were 23,000 city workers who were still not vaccinated. There was the possibility that it could be that many people that were out, but in fact, the mayor just announced that there are 9,000 city employees that are out today without pay. That's because 12,000 have applied for religious or medical exemption. Now that 12,000 they're going to be allowed to continue to work and they just have to get the weekly testing until the city gets around to processing their application.

It's not quite as dire I think as some people were thinking it might be as of-- we were looking at the numbers all through the weekend from Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Basically, the fact that the city is saying that, "All right, we're going to let those 12,000 who applied for exemptions to continue working." I think that that's averted a major disruption.

Brian Lehrer: Jaclyn, do you want to take us into even a deeper dive as a data reporter, like which agencies saw the biggest jumps in recent days and break it down a little bit like that?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Absolutely. We don't have those very latest numbers, but we do have them as of last night. What we know-- sorry, it's a little loud by me, the EMS saw an increase from 61% with at least one shot before the mandate to 87% as of last night, and as for the entire fire department, they went from 60% to 80%. We also saw big improvements in the sanitation department. They went from about 62% with at least one shot to 82%. The New York City Housing Authority also saw some big gains. Even with those increases, plenty of agencies are still lagging behind.

Those are including the ones that New Yorkers rely on the most. A quarter of all firefighters or related staff are still unvaccinated as of yesterday. That's still the case for NYCHA. Only 82% of sanitation workers are vaccinated, so 18% aren't. The Department of Homeless Services and the NYPD are also lagging behind compared to the rest of the city.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, do you have any analysis of why it's those particular agencies that are lagging the most? Why is it these frontline agencies the ones that most New Yorkers who don't work for New York City Government think of first when they think of city workers, firefighters, people who work for NYCHA and building services, the EMTs, and police officers, sanitation workers too?

Elizabeth Kim: Since the beginning, the mayor has been asked this question a lot. Basically what city officials consistently say it's two things. It's misinformation, disinformation, and it's also your political persuasion. You will find a lot of firefighters, a lot of NYPD who live in Staten Island more right-leaning Republican areas, you don't want to completely just stereotype them. Basically, more right-leaning people who are skeptical of the vaccine are reluctant to take it. Since the summer when the mayor first announced that there would be mandatory vaccines for teachers and healthcare workers.

You were already seeing sanitation workers, for instance, protesting, showing up at protests at Gracie Mansion. We could see this coming. We could see this coming with the sanitation department and also with the FDNY and also the NYPD because we're beginning to see very, very low rates of vaccinations in those departments.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call here. Sydney, a paramedic in Queens. Sydney you’re on WNYC. We really appreciate your calling in. Hi.

Sydney: Hey, how are you doing, Brian? Like the journalist was saying before, I feel that the vaccination rates in the city was made more like a political statement than anything else. I myself I’m a paramedic in New York City, I did get vaccinated back in December of last year. I did it mostly because I lost family members, I lost my dad, I lost two close cousins who had COVID.

Brian Lehrer: So sorry.

Sydney: I feel like my own obligation to do it to try to keep it away from my own family. Now in my family, the only one that doesn't have is my seven year old which is open right now. I will have it by the end of the week. Looking back in time, when we had-- I would say like in the '50s I believe as Rafael was saying about the polio vaccine, they didn't even know what was going on with that and people just [unintelligible 00:09:30] trying to get the vaccine. Stay away from that to stay alive pretty much without any consequence.

Brian Lehrer: Sydney your line is going in and out a little bit. I think our listeners can understand you enough for me to ask you a follow-up question. Because for me anyway, just as an individual, it's probably been more baffling the rate of non-vaccination among EMTs, paramedics, and other people working in emergency medical services out on the road than maybe any other population and the rate of unvaccination has been relatively high. It's people like you in your position, who would come into the most close contact with the most sick people. I would imagine, would consider yourselves the most personally at risk, never mind, even the larger societal reasons to get vaccinated, but just considering yourself in your job and the way you have contact with sick people, some of whom will have COVID, the most vulnerable. Why do you think there's such a non-vaccination rate among your peers?

Sydney: Again, it's just like, I feel that most of the people that I talk to that are not getting vaccinated, I'm [unintelligible 00:10:58] a lot to the right. It's not even about the vaccine. I feel that it's more about a political statement because of their, I would say their leaders will pretty much tell them not to do it and they follow a political way instead of following science. That's what I'm thinking.

Brian Lehrer: We really appreciate your call Sydney. Thank you very much. Good luck to you out there as a paramedic and to your family after your COVID losses and everything else. Jaclyn, I don't know if paramedic data or EMT data is anything that you've dug into explicitly. Do you have reporting on that?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Still we don't have the latest numbers, but we do have again from last night and I can pull those up quickly. It looks like there was a big increase over time before the mandate 61% of EMS workers were vaccinated and then as of last night, 87% were vaccinated. That's a really big increase, but it is still on the lower end for city agencies.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, interesting. Liz with the fire department overall, and the EMTs are technically part of the fire department, the New York post reported over the weekend that 26 firehouses were likely to close as of today because of unvaccinated firefighters, that has turned out not to be true. Correct?

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. That was basically a mistake. The number 26 pertained to fire companies, not firehouses or fire stations, there's a distinction. Each fire house has about one to three fire companies. A fire company is basically there's a hierarchy there it's led by a captain who commands about 12 to 20 firefighters. I did want to speak to your point about why are city workers like EMS technicians and even firefighters and even NYPD resistant to getting the vaccine since they are in many ways the most exposed to people who might be ill. There's one point that a lot of them have been making over and over again is that many of us have already had COVID and we have already developed natural antibodies. This is a question that is put to the health commissioner and the mayor over and over again.

The answer they give is the evidence still shows that the duration and the strength of natural immunity is not clear, but what is clear is that if you do get the shot that does strengthen the immunity that you might already have, and that will protect you far more than natural immunity but I think that this idea that we've already gotten sick, why do you want us to get this vaccine? It's this resistance to having something injected into their bodies that they don't trust?

Brian Lehrer: It seems like from the numbers you're reporting this morning that the mayor is announcing that the mayor is winning this battle with the unions enough, that he doesn't have to compromise further with their demands to delay the required date. Tell me if that's your impression, but I did hear one argument on NY1 on Friday from the head of the firefighters union that may made wonder if maybe there isn't a little bit of wiggle room for the mayor along the lines of what you were just discussing, which is natural immunity among those who've had COVID.

The union president claimed at least, who knows if these numbers are right, but he claimed that something like 70% of firefighters have already had at COVID. He's looking for a partial exemption for them based on the fact that the doctors say that after you have COVID at least for a number of months, three months, four months, you are probably immune so that if somebody had recently who's a firefighter or other city worker, that after their last positive COVID test, they should then be allowed to go to work.

Well really, after their last negative COVID test, they should be allowed to go to work when they've recovered for three months or four months before they have to get the vaccine. Is that cutting it too fine to even be a topic of discussions between the unions and the mayor?

Elizabeth Kim: No, I think that that's absolutely what they're trying to negotiate, but I would be very surprised if the mayor surrenders on this issue, just because he and his health officials have been repeatedly asked about the efficacy of natural immunity versus getting the vaccine. They've pointed to evidence and the CDC put out a study just last week saying that the shot gives you stronger immunity. We do not know how long that natural immunity lasts and whether it's even strong enough against Delta.

I would be very surprised if the mayor wants to give in on this. In the way that he has given in, he has in some respect offered a delay by allowing those workers who are submitting the exemptions to basically continue working. One question you might ask is, why did they wait until the absolute deadline to submit those exemptions if they knew they had some religious or medical issues? I think that has been the way they've wiggled around this potential massive shortage issue that would happen today.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking about out day one of the vaccine mandate for city workers being in effect and trying to assess how much of a shortage might be developing in the fire department, in the police department, among ambulance workers and drivers, among sanitation workers that are going to affect our public health and safety and just level of general disgustingness when it comes to the garbage on the streets, with Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky and Liz Kim from WNYC and Gothamist. Kevin in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kevin, thank you for calling in.

Kevin: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to make a point as to a reason why more city workers, sanitation, NYPD or FPNY individuals may not be getting vaccinated is because inherently their jobs are riskier by nature so they perceive risk differently. They probably feel since they've already been working throughout this pandemic for some time now, the necessity to go out and the urgency to go and do it is not the same as other individuals

Brian Lehrer: That's a really interesting psychological analysis of people whose jobs thrust them into risky situations every day. The caller told our screener that he's a utility worker, which would be one of those jobs potentially. Jaclyn, I don't know if there's any data that could back that up. I don't know if there's any survey, it's not any reporting that we've done at WNYC and Gothamist that I know of, but I don't know if there's any data that comes to mind that compares risk perception patterns among people whose jobs incur more risk on a regular basis than say people who might go into offices.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: That's really interesting. There's none that I know of, but just off the top of my head, I think it would be really interesting to look at the different New York city agencies and split them into the ones where people are putting themselves in harm's way on a regular basis versus going into an office and see if there are differences, both in vaccination rate and uptake and in perception of the necessity of the vaccine.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and whether that tends to track along political lines and those people tend to be more Republican. Also, it tends to be more of the vaccine resistors. I don't know that that would line up, but that would be an interesting thing to compare. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are on New York and New Jersey public radio. Few more minutes on this. Jaclyn, let me stay with you because last week it was your reporting that 311 was receiving more than four times the usual number of complaints regarding uncollected trash. How explicit were union leaders or workers, that service cuts were a result of anger around the mandate? Do we have a sense of whether that's going to get better or worse this week?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: What's interesting is that the city versus union leaders and workers are pretty at odds on this one. The mayor said in a press conference last week that he assumed this slowdown was related to sanitation workers' opposition to the mandate, but then you've got Harry Nespoli, who's the president of the local sanitation workers union. He told my colleague, Gwynne Hogan, that there wasn't a slowdown, and that's despite all that data to the contrary. He blamed the pickup delays on the rain last week, even though we saw the complaints start climbing days before the storm.

He did say union workers were upset about the mandate, though, and that it was hurting morale. Then as far as the sanitation workers themselves, we mainly know that they've been slow to get vaccinated, and they're still lagging behind. Like I said earlier, 18% still haven't shown proof of vaccination as of yesterday, which puts them among the least vaccinated city agencies. Then as for this week, DSNY has taken some steps to shore up staffing, but a portion of workers continue to outspokenly oppose the mandate. It's not really clear.

Brian Lehrer: If it is still 18%, that's a pretty high percentage of sanitation workers who suddenly won't be on the job. You reported that the trash complaints were more prevalent in some areas of the city than others as of last week. Can you break that data down for us a little bit?

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Yes, absolutely. We did see some pretty sharp differences. Basically, what we did, we looked at the complaints by neighborhood in the week leading up to the deadline, and then compare them to another comparable week before the mandate was announced. That way, we could see where the complaints increase the most. There were real differences. Across Staten Island, we saw 50 times the usual number of calls to 311, about trash or recycling. In Bergen Beach and Canarsie, we saw 20 to 30 times the usual number of complaints.

Our colleague, Carolyn Lewis actually went out to Canarsie and she saw the piles herself. There were other pockets, too, that were a little less dramatic places in the Bronx and South Brooklyn, where complaints doubled or tripled. It is important to remember that the complaints don't tell the whole story. Those are only the missed pickups that people call in to complain about. You don't see the ones that people quietly ignore.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a sanitation worker calling in, I think, Delilah in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling. Hi.

Delilah: Hi, how are you? Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. What do you got for us?

Delilah: I just wanted to say initially, I'm a Democrat. I'm not a Republican because that doesn't really align with me. Secondly, yes, I wanted to touch on the point again, that usually with any other disease, natural immunity is actually more effective than any immunization. If we're already on our third and fourth booster, then clearly, something isn't working in respect to that immunity.

With anything, you can get your titers checked to see if you still have the antibodies, right? Why isn't that being spoken of? Then secondly, these COVID shots are working so well [inaudible 00:23:32] for getting it and spreading it. If you can get it and spread it, then what's the point of a mandate? Yes, the COVID shot helps the individual, but it's not helping getting it and spreading it, which is what this conversation is all about.

Brian Lehrer: Unfortunately, Delilah, I think that you have innocently because I don't think you're doing anything maliciously. I think you have innocently fallen for some misinformation that's out there. Because the vaccination rate, being as high as it is in New York as a whole is chasing the pandemic. When you talk about the breakthrough infections, for example, and try to diminish the effectiveness of the vaccines, we see that 90% plus of the people in ICUs, 90% plus of the people who are still dying from COVID are unvaccinated people.

When they talk about breakthrough infections, some people are spreading this number that there are 120,000 breakthrough infections in New York State so far among vaccinated people. That number, however, misses the denominator, which is that there are about 12 million vaccinated people in New York State. The breakthrough rate is only 1%. Yes, vaccinated people who get-- One sec. You can come back in just a second. Vaccinated people who get COVID can spread it to other people. That is true. The prevalence of the disease is so much less because of the vaccinations, which is why I raised the question, are people who are not getting it, freeloading on those who are?

Delilah: Now my question to you is, I went to school for journalism. As a journalist, I'd never expect for you to have that reaction. In the sense, usually, journalists will look at things from a 365-degree view. What I'm seeing happening on television and in the radio is based on the people that are funding your stations and things of that sort. It seems as though everything is pretty one-sided.

To me, that's one of the greatest tragedies of this COVID pandemic, is the fact that even we can't trust our journalists to dig a little deeper than just what the CDC and the FDA are doing. Because how is it that the government is passing these boosters and saying, "Yes, we're going to get these boosters before the FDA and the CDC even does it?" Why is it that the head of the FDA and CDC, if you look back, they were part of pharma? Why is that happening? What's going on here? Why isn't anybody talking about that? That's my question to you.

Brian Lehrer: Delilah, the numbers are the numbers unless you think people are just making them up.

Delilah: You're only looking at the numbers that somebody's feeding you. Look at the big picture. Go a little deeper. Have you looked at the FLCC's numbers? Have you really looked at other people's numbers? No. You just go by what the FDA and the CDC are feeding you.

Brian Lehrer: It's not true. I'm going to leave it there. I appreciate your calls. These numbers are coming from individual hospitals and individual health departments all over the country. Watch the TV coverage on the national news. Look what they're saying at the public health departments, in cities in Oklahoma, in cities in Iowa, what's going on in the hospitals, in the morgues in Idaho. They're not just a small cabal of people at the FDA and the CDC, who even if you believe that they're really just in pharma's pocket trying to sell vaccinations to the rest of the country and that we're in their pocket too in the major networks, and the nonprofit news organizations like us.

You have to take such leaps based on preconceptions in order to come to those conclusions in the face of all the data from all the local hospitals, all the public health departments around the country. That's I guess, the last thing that I'm going to say about it. Well, Liz, what were you thinking listening to that exchange?

Elizabeth Kim: The only thing I would have to add to that, Brian, and that was just an amazing response on your part. The only thing that I would add is yes, breakthrough infections happen. What's important to keep in mind is that the people who do contract COVID, they're not getting as sick. In fact, some of them don't even have symptoms. The people like you said, who are getting sick and who are winding up in ICUs, are largely the unvaccinated and older people who may have been vaccinated, but their bodies have not been able to build up the same durable immunity as a younger person is able to.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to leave it there. Obviously, not the end of this story, and certainly not in terms of how city services are going to be affected by that 9% of city workers but higher than that in some frontline agencies, who did not get vaccinated by Friday's deadline and are now suspended without pay. What's going to happen with sanitation and garbage collection? What's going to happen with EMS and ambulances when people need them? Perhaps most crucially, as well as in the NYPD, and the firefighter force. We will continue to follow it of course in WNYC News and on Gothamist and on the show. Elizabeth Kim, senior editor for Gothamist, and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, data reporter for WNYC and Gothamist thank you both for coming on.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky: Thanks so much.

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