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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, good morning, everyone. How much should your workplace your local hospital, your city, or your country mandate vaccines? With the contagious Delta variant spreading and vaccine resistance stalling progress toward wiping it out, we are now entering a new phase in the COVID era. There is a vast array of responses to report, and therefore, a vast array of debates breaking out.

In France, have you heard this yet? President Macron has announced that starting in August, you'll have to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to enter almost any public space indoors: restaurants, movie theaters, long-distance trains, proof of vaccination or a negative test. You could say Macron is the non-Ron DeSantis, DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is prohibiting even private businesses from even voluntarily requiring proof of COVID status if they choose to for customers or employees. Macron is requiring them to do it nationwide in France.

There was a big protest in France last weekend, we should say, that included both the left and the right, the Trump-ey Le Pen movement, and the Green Party, both took to the streets to protest Macron's proof of vaccine or negative test rules. Back in this country, San Francisco is requiring all city employees to be vaccinated, except for religious and medical exemptions. San Francisco is also urging private employers to require vaccines for their workers, too. It's a big debate right now in the big Silicon Valley tech companies.

By contrast, Mayor de Blasio in New York this week ordered something much less, only workers at public hospitals will have to show proof of vaccines or show a negative COVID test once a week. No requirement or even encouragement for private employers like in San Francisco, and nothing so far about other city workers, even though the NYPD acknowledged this week that less than half of police officers have gotten a vaccine. So far they don't have to, but they may still get in your face.

The mayor is still planning his 60,000-person Central Park reopening concert for next month. We'll talk to Mayor de Blasio about New York City's evolving vaccination policy in our Ask the Mayor call-in after the eleven o'clock news this morning.

Then, there are private hospitals. The big Catholic healthcare system, Trinity Health with hospitals in 22 states, is requiring vaccinations of workers according to The New York Times. In New York City, New York Presbyterian and NYU Langone are among those that are imposing vaccine mandates. Hundreds of New York Presbyterian workers protested that outside the hospital yesterday, led by their union, 1199, health care workers against vaccine requirements.

Then there's the education sector. Many colleges are requiring vaccines to return to campus in person this fall, but then you have states like Florida and some others, where colleges are not even allowed to choose to do that. I looked at The New York Times page this morning for biggest outbreaks among college campuses and yes, the University of Florida was number one.

Now, this is all part of the latest phase of the complicated pandemic era, as the US is in what's being called the fourth COVID surge because of the Delta variant. If this is what's happening in the summer, who knows what'll happen when the weather gets cold and more people move indoors for more things. With us now are two New York Times reporters covering aspects of these developments, and we'll invite your calls in a minute.

Our guests are Reed Abelson who covers the business of healthcare for The Times. Her most recent article is called More Hospitals Are Requiring Workers to Get COVID Vaccines. We have Roger Cohen, The Times Paris bureau chief whose latest article is called Macron to the French: Vaccinate or Else. Roger and Reed, thanks very much for coming on WNYC today. Hello.

Roger Cohen: Hello, Brian.

Reed Abelson: Thank you.

Brian: Reed your article has a struggling and revealing statistic that we'll start with. 96% of doctors are vaccinated, other health care workers, maybe 60%. Why such a difference within the medical profession?

Reed: It's interesting. I think it's because the hospital workers really are a spectrum of people with different educational backgrounds, where they live, how much they're influenced by their communities. I was surprised and it isn't always tracking the way you think. University of Iowa hospitals has nearly really high percentage of folks vaccinated, but you go to Florida, and it's really pretty grim.

Brian: At the beginning of the pandemic, we did many segments about healthcare workers protesting the lack of protection that their hospitals were giving them, like, not enough PPEs, maybe you covered that, too, now the best protection is available, and the protests are against having to use it. Are these the same people who protested lack of protection now protesting mandatory vaccines?

Reed: Well, some of them are, but I think-- actually, if you look at Houston Methodist, where they did do a mandate, the vast majority of their workforce, tens of thousands of people got vaccinated, and then there were only about 150 that left. What I'm hearing is, at least in some places, it's a very vocal minority, but there is an expectation, especially as you increase the pressure through a mandate, that more healthcare workers will comply.

Brian: Roger Cohen in Paris, tell us more about President Macron's new mandate, how sweeping is it?

Roger: Well, it's pretty sweeping, Brian. He's taken the lead in Europe, in going quite a long way toward mandating vaccination. He hasn't actually done that, but what he said to the branch on July 12th, was your life's going to be pretty miserable if you don't do it, because you won't and it's high summer here, vacation season. You won't have access to restaurants, cafes, bars. You won't be able to travel any distance to speak of on trains or planes. You need to get what has been called here a health pass, in Italy, it's been called a green pass, which shows that you have been vaccinated, or that you were tested in the previous 48 hours, or your life will be extremely curtailed.

Now this, of course, poses questions about how far you can go in trying to curtail the Delta variant, if you're also, on the face of it, maybe curtailing basic personal freedoms.

Brian: I noticed your article said the requirement would apply to traveling on long-distance trains. What about subways and other local mass transit?

Roger: No, that is not covered. You may ask, well, what's the logic of that? Well, I think we've all learned during this pandemic, that quite often, there's not a lot of logic to a lot of things, but no, it was specifically, trains, planes, longer distance travel.

Brian: Can you describe the protests against the new policy and what the heck, the Green Party and the right wing pro-Trump Le Pen are doing on the same side of this?

Roger: I don't think it's so much the Green Party, there's some of that, as more the extreme left, the France Unbowed party of Mr. Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen's far right party that have protested. They protested on a couple of levels, one is that this is chaotic, and the second level is about freedoms, which may be quite ironic coming from Marine Le Pen's party. It's a continuation of the Yellow Vest movement of 2018 in some ways, in the sense that it's anti-elite it's anti-Big Pharma, big business. There's a lot of conspiracy theories. People questioned the vaccine's efficacity, but they also question how serious COVID really is.

There's a feeling that among these protesters, that the elites of the world have banded together and pulled a fast one on the people. Of course, that echoes things you hear, heard with Donald Trump in office in the United States, and still hear from wide segments of the American population, notably in Florida, as you just said.

Brian: Listeners, help us report this story, or ask a question if you'd like to. Do you work at a hospital or other healthcare facility? Are you for or against vaccine mandates there? 646-435-7280. Anyone listening in San Francisco today? I know it's early, where the city government is requiring all city workers to get vaccinated? San Francisco has been ahead of New York on almost every aspect of COVID prevention and the rates of infection have been consistently lower but is there a backlash there, too? San Francisco, tell us how you're doing. 646-435-7280.

Anyone listening in France right now or anyone in the US who has ties to France? What do you think about Macron's national mandate, even for customers going into cafes and such? Are you pro-Macron on this or pro-protesters? 646-435-7280.

Listeners, back in this country, remember, in the early spring, when COVID cases were falling rather than rising as they are now, and the first music venues and sports arenas were opening up with vaccine or negative test proof requirements? That didn't last long, and now here we are, with anybody can do anything. People thought it was over, but it's not. Are you going to concerts, and movies and anything else indoors with no vaccine requirements, listeners? Did you start doing that but you stopped? Do you just want to be left alone to take your chances of getting it or spreading it or what?

From Staten Island, to San Francisco, to the Champs-Élysées, give us a call, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or tweet your question or comment @BrianLehrer with Reed Abelson from The New York Times, who covers the business of health, and Roger Cohen, who covers Paris and Europe. Reed, one of the interesting things to me in your article about US hospitals is about staffing shortages at a growing number of hospitals, and the tensions around how to prevent that. Some hospitals are becoming short of staff because so many unvaccinated health care workers are getting COVID.

Reed: Yes, that seems to be the case in some areas. That was true of the Jacksonville hospital. I thought there was just palpable frustration. Not only were they seeing cases rise, they had more cases than they did in January, so that they were surpassing the last peak, but suddenly 75 workers were out sick and more were being tested. As the administrator there said, we know that vaccines could help.

I think that that dynamic is really troubling, but on the flip side, you have other hospitals saying, "We can't do a mandate, because if we do, our healthcare workers will just go across the street to a hospital that doesn't have the mandate." In some places, state hospital associations, or communities are basically trying to have everybody do the same thing so that you don't have to worry about losing workers.

Brian: Roger, people who know your body of work know you're a big thinker on Europe and history, and you place the vaccine mandate question in your article in the context of the eternal tension in France between its Jacobin state-directed instincts, and its enlightenment, embodiment of freedom. Can you describe that tension in a little more detail?

Roger: Well, France has a very centralized system of government that survived the revolution. It went on from the monarchy, to Napoleon who really centralized the French state, set down the French legal code, set up the system of prefect. There's been a very top-down aspect to French politics all the way through to the Fifth Republic, which was founded in 1958, and of course de Gaulle, for many years, was the personification of that.

At the same time, it's the land of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the land of personal liberties, the land that said, "No, feudal rule is not for us anymore, individuals have rights, responsibilities, and freedoms." That tension is here in the society, and it's playing out in some ways now.

President Macron took a pretty bold top-down decision, because I think he's got an election coming up in April, and he was facing the possibility of a fourth wave in the fall, and the economy going again into a nosedive, and a fourth lockdown. I got here in December, and the first six months, there was a curfew at either 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, it wasn't Paris in fun mode by any means. He wanted to act. He acted, and there was a tremendous response.

There were 3.5 million requests for vaccine appointments in the week after he spoke, and vaccination rates went up from 120,000 a day or something to 900,000 a day at one point. It was effective but just this week, you had Claire Hédon, who is-- France has a government-appointed human rights ombudsman and Ms. Hédon is that person, and she warned this week that the parliament, which has been debating Macron's measures was acting with unjustifiable haste, given the extent of the blow to fundamental rights and liberties that is "foreseen".

She was particularly disturbed by the notion that police powers of some kind are going to be granted to restaurants, cafes, and bars, because they will either face a big fine if they don't do it, or they will have to ask anyone coming in to show this health pass, and then they have to police that in some way. There a lot of open questions, and you try putting a French person between him or her and a good meal, and see how that plays out. I think we could be headed into, let's say, a fairly lively summer.

Brian: Reed, would you compare the United States political culture by comparison to what Roger was just describing over there? With respect to the story that Roger was just telling about turning café maître d's into police officers, we had that in the US for a few minutes. We did segments on this show when restaurants, music venues, stadiums, were first opening up with vaccine or negative test proof requirements, and we talked to venue owners who were saying, "Yes, we're turning some people away." I went to a Yankee game when that was in place, and the person ahead of me on line was turned away because they couldn't match their vaccine pass with a picture ID.

They started doing that in this country, but how would you compare the political culture in the US to what Roger just described in France with respect to these things?

Reed: Well, it's interesting because I think, again, I looked at, at least the parallel with the flu vaccine, at least in terms of mandates in hospital, and after an initial resistance, everyone accepted it. Again, the idea here would be that healthcare workers are different than somebody going into a café, that they have a special responsibility.

I think some of the outrages here is that there's no distinction among different roles that people play. I find that interesting, and the other thing what I kept hearing from the hospital administrators was how persistent some of the misinformation is. Even among their workers, that there's such a fundamental lack of trust of institutions, which may or may not be American, but that has certainly grown and been fostered, so that people don't trust any entity including their employer. They may trust a colleague, they may trust the boss, but it is very interesting, and I was shocked at how difficult it was for people, trying to convince people to get vaccinated, to overcome even the most wild conspiracy theories.

Brian: We're going to take a short break and then continue with Reed Abelson in the United States from The New York Times, Roger Cohen, in Paris from The New York Times and we'll start taking your calls, stay with us.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we talk about the very wide array of vaccine mandates or not, breaking out in hospital systems, in cities for their entire municipal workforces, in countries, mostly in Europe for entering cafés, and restaurants, and trains, and anything else. In New York, on any of those spectra, we'll talk to Mayor de Blasio about that next hour. Our guests are Reed Abelson, who covers the business of healthcare in the United States for The New York Times and Roger Cohen, The Times Paris bureau chief. Roger, just before we go to the phones, we're talking about France, but is this kind of Europe wide? Is this happening in other countries, too? You mentioned Italy briefly a moment ago.

Roger: Yes. Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, Thursday, announced very similar measures to the French. In Italy, you're going to have to get, they call it a green pass, and without that green pass, similarly, you won't be admitted indoors to restaurants, cafés. It's a little more limited than the French. It doesn't apply, I think to travel, but it is following a similar path, and Draghi was, in announcing this, used very strong language. He said, "The appeal to not getting vaccinated is an appeal to die." In other words, anybody telling you not to get vaccinated is telling you to die. Those are strong words.

He also warned that, if you don't get vaccinated, other people's lives could be effective. In Britain, Brian, of course, where the vaccination rate is higher, closer to 70% than around 60% elsewhere in Europe, Boris Johnson is going in a kind of Ron DeSantis direction. Even though the Delta variant is surging in Britain the way it is in France, he announced the so-called Freedom Day on Monday this week, removing a lot of internal restrictions, and in effect, saying, "We're going to take our chances. We're pretty well vaccinated. The number of the cases rising exponentially, yes, but not the number of deaths. COVID with us ain't going away and we're going to take our chances."

You have a pretty wide spectrum of approaches here as you do between different states within the United States.

Brian: Andrea in White Plains, you're on WNYC. Andrea, thank you so much for calling in.

Andrea: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you just fine.

Andrea: I work at a big hospital in the Bronx, and I am an RN. I'm also, I did contact tracing that just really stopped about a month ago. I'm horrified as an RN, that our vaccination rate is so low. You look around at places like Florida and Alabama, all these people are putting the rest of us at risk. You always hear about-- it's been completely politicized, and it's been turned into kind of this crazy, religious, not religious. There are so many complexities about why people don't get vaccines and I understand that, but I have no problem with what Macron is doing. I have no problem with de Blasio saying that all of the hospitals employees at New York hospitals have to get vaccinated.

There's no way to stop this without the vaccine. There's just not, you have to get it. You look at past epidemics, like 1918, and you look at what New York City has done before. We were like in the forefront of getting people vaccinated, and now it's turned into this like craziness that people, they're saying, "Oh, I care about the country and we want to get back to normal." Well, literally it's easy as going and getting a vaccine that's free. Yes, I'm kind of angry.

Brian: Andrea, can I ask you a question? At the hospital where you work, are other vaccines required?

Andrea: That's a good question. I don't think so, but they don't impact people. Are you asking-- well, actually that's not true. As an RN, yes. You have to get titers to make sure that you've had like the vaccines that you've had in the past, like hepatitis, so you're not spreading that to patient, or your colleagues, or visitors. Yes, you do.

Brian: Yes. That's what I thought. How about annual flu vaccines in your hospitals?

Andrea: Absolutely, and it's free. You just can go sign up and get it. They tell you, I want to say a few weeks in advance, and there's a signup sheet. It takes five minutes. You go get jabbed, not a big deal.

Brian: Andrea, thank you so much for your call and Reed Abelson, what about that in national context? I have a friend at one of the big hospitals in New York who said the policy there for flu vaccines is you have to get it every year, or wear a mask at all time when you're on the premises. That might make COVID vaccine advocates roll their eyes, like a mask is not the same thing as a vaccine, but what's, based on your reporting, the national picture of other vaccine requirements for workers in hospitals?

Reed: A lot of places require the flu vaccine. There is a sense that, again, that was met initially with resistance, but that that will eventually be actually the status quo. I think what's interesting about what New York City seems to be doing, and it's the same thing, which is if you don't get vaccinated, you have to do tests constantly. What they're counting on is that a lot of folks will just say, "Okay, fine. I'm going to be vaccinated. It's easier. It's less hassle." I think so some places, even if they don't put in a mandate, may make it so cumbersome not to have, not to be vaccinated, that a lot of people will end up being vaccinated.

Brian: Bill in Rego Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bill.

Bill: Hi, Brian. I'd like to ask your guests what the rationale is, or perhaps the legal justification in the United States for a religious exemption from vaccine mandates, or worse yet, in my opinion, from being tested. To put the matter pretty clearly, why should someone's subjective religious beliefs jeopardize my right to a very objective life?

Brian: Jeopardize the public health. Reed, you mentioned in your article that the big Catholic healthcare system, Trinity, which has facilities in 22 states, is mandating the vaccine. Do you happen to know what are the particular religions that object to vaccines on religious grounds, and how people file for those exemptions?

Reed: I don't know about the specific religions. What I've been told is that in general, anyone seeking either a religious/ethical, or medical exemption has to go through a fairly rigorous process. You have to have one-on-one counseling and education. At the end of the day, I think we're talking usually just a percentage or two of the total workforce. I don't know whether, to be honest, the hospitals have granted these exceptions because there are always exceptions, or whether they think, it's better to have some safety valve so to speak, so that at least some people who would otherwise, either legitimately or not, really need exemptions are handled.

Brian: Maria in Midtown, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maria.

Maria: Good morning, everyone. I dined yesterday afternoon at an upscale Midtown restaurant, which I'm not going to name, and I'm not going to a Yelp review. I dine there often. I know the staff very well and they just reopened for lunch. The server, the bartender as I was sitting at the bar had served me beverages, food, et cetera, et cetera. She was fully masked, and cutting up fruit, et cetera. She was wearing gloves, but she was coughing. I just assumed, foolishly, that she probably was vaccinated.

I know that the rule, it's not mandated for restaurant workers to be vaxxed. I personally have been fully vaxxed since March, but she was coughing and so on, and after I paid my bill, I said, "Have you been vaxxed?" She said, "No, I can't get a vaccine because I have a cold." I was horrified, just completely horrified. It's A, inexcusable that she would come to work with with an active cold. B, it's none of my business, whether she's vaxxed or not, but I want to know if and when there's going to be mandatory vaccination for food servers, especially when they're coming within two feet of oneself.

Then I spoke with the management who came outside and they know me, again. This is an upscale restaurant with many, many, many, hundreds of brands and names and so on. The manager did explain that the girl was tested last week, last week, and tested negative. The pieces of this puzzle are not making sense, and I'm pretty horrified. I'm going to go for, check on my antibodies today, and get a rapid test. I'm just wondering if there's any, Ms. Abelson, if you know of anything down the pike in terms of New York City health and vaccinations? I don't know, how would you feel?

Brian: You'd feel comfortable in Macron's France obviously. I'm going to ask the mayor that very question when he's on next hour, why are you not considering the kind of thing because of stories like Maria's for New York, that they're about to implement in France. Reed, how would you answer her question?

Reed: I don't know how I feel. I do think watching the hospitals as a first indicator, my sense is that as there will be increasingly calls for mandates, and things like mandates, and requirements that workers stay home if they're sick, will start becoming more prevalent. I think we've been slow to react. For example, the American Hospital Association just came out and said, "Yes, we favor mandates." I think this is a process and I wouldn't be surprised if we see much more restrictive, but probably community by community.

Brian: How much Roger, is this pure politics on the part of Macron in the French context? You do put it in that context in your article, noting that his popularity has waxed and waned, and he's up for reelection in something like nine months.

Roger: Well, Brian, I think there's some politics. This is, we're within nine months, as you just said, of the election. As I think I mentioned earlier, if there was a big fourth wave, that would definitely affect his chances of being reelected adversely. The last two French presidents, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, neither of them was reelected. There is that, but I think there's also just a still pretty critical health situation where you have about 60% of the population with at least one vaccination. You had 22,000 cases in the last 24 hours, that was the highest number since early May. The fall is only two, three months away, so I think he felt that he had to act.

I think people generally though, are just very confused and feel ricocheted, buffeted this way and that, be it in Europe or the United States. They don't know quite what to make of numbers. The number of cases is way up, the number of deaths is way down. The number of deaths is way down, today with all we now know about it, even with the variant, just how dangerous, mortally dangerous is COVID? What should we compare it with? Should we compare it with some deadly disease or should we compare it with other illnesses that we live with? I think there's a lot of of confusion and data out there.

Then there is this big freedom issue which we've talked about. I mentioned the French Defender of Rights and what she had to say, but nobody, I think, or not many people think there should be a freedom to put other people's lives at risk. These are very complicated issues. You have San Francisco going one way, Florida going another. Here, you have Britain going one way, France going another. We will see.

Brian: We will see. Reed Abelson and Roger Cohen from The New York Times, thank you very much for joining us.

Roger: Thank you, Brian.

Reed: Thank you.

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