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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. All right, here's 45 seconds of Mayor Adams just a few minutes ago at Citi Field announcing exemptions to the city's vaccine mandate for anybody who works in person in the public or private sector exemptions expanding like this.

Mayor Adams: Today, I signed Emergency Executive Order 62 expanding the performance exemption to private employer mandates. This is about putting New York City-based performance on a level playing field. Day one when I was mayor, I looked at the rule that stated hometown players had an unfair disadvantage for those who were coming to visit, and immediately I felt we needed to look at that, but my medical professional say, "Eric, we had a different place. We have to wait until we had a place where we had a low area and we could re-examine some of the mandates." We're here today.

Brian Lehrer: Short version, Kyrie Irving can play at Barclays Center when the Nets make the playoffs. Aaron Judge who appears to be unvaccinated and other Yankees and Mets can play in person when the baseball season opens in New York starting in early April. Performers who are New Yorkers but unvaccinated can now perform at performance venues but the vaccine mandates stays in place for everybody else. Let's talk about it. Joining me now is epidemiologist and physician Dr. Jay Varma. He's director of the Cornell Center for pandemic prevention and response and a professor of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Varma, we always appreciate when you come on with us.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Dr. Jay Varma: Great, thank you for having me Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Did I explain it well, or what else would you add about what the mayor actually just announced just on the facts?

Dr. Jay Varma: Just on the facts, what we have here is we have a rule that used to apply to all adults who are employed by a New York City-based employer and now we have a rule that applies to all adults with a New York City employer, unless you're rich, powerful and connected, in which case, it looks like you're able to get an exemption.

Brian Lehrer: Rich, powerful and connected in the specific fields of professional athletes or performers, I imagined performance means, musicians, Broadway actors, things like that.

Dr. Jay Varma: I assume so and one can imagine a whole host of reasons why people may now claim that they're performers to get this type of exemption. I want to just step back and since I played a major role when I was in city government, working with Mayor de Blasio to put in the vaccine verification and the vaccine mandates, and I just really want to make sure people understand the logic here. The virus isn't going away, it continues to evolve into forms that are more infectious and in some situations, more lethal. New York City is the most vulnerable place in the United States, because of our global connections and density.

Our biggest vulnerability is our healthcare system, it can't continue to flex every three months to manage this massive surge in patients. The single best way to reduce that demand on our hospitals is for all adults to be fully vaccinated. Most adults in New York City work for an employer so mandating vaccinations for all employees is the way we protect our healthcare system and build our resilience.

The reason that we put this policy in place during the former mayor's administration, to be this broad is because you can't pick and choose winners legally, the courts will see through that and they'll deem the role, what they call arbitrary and capricious and therefore say, you're picking winners and losers therefore, the whole rule gets thrown out.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners are starting to call in we'll have time for a few phone calls at 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet us @BrianLehrer. Somebody already tweeted this. Dr. Varma, this announcement by the mayor is absolutely unfair. I'm a big proponent of the vaccine requirements writes this listener, but this is grossly unfair to the people who lost their jobs, because of their, in my opinion, silly refusal to get vaccinated. Everyone should play by the same rules.

I'm glad that tweet came in put that way because I fear agreeing with that listener, that the pressure now is going to be to exempt more people who work in person now that he's exempted athletes and performers, when really I think the conversation that we should be having is don't do this.

Dr. Jay Varma: Absolutely. I think this is exactly what we talked about in city government when we're making these rules. We look very clearly at what the issues are related to fairness and legality and as soon as you start to open up exemptions, you start to basically, you have two problems, you have the legal problem, but you have a social problem. You're sending a message that vaccines are only important for one group of the population when the reality of COVID is, we all breathe the same air. We're all in this together. These are very limited sacrifices that people need to make, to benefit all of us.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you what I think is the hardest question about this, that is a pushback question to your position and that is, from what I've read, New York is the only city in the country, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't find another one so far, that has this kind of a blanket vaccine requirement for people who work in person. Some cities have it for their public sector employees so city government telling its employees, that they need to be vaccinated, but I don't think any place else in the country has it for private-sector workers, mandated by the government, as opposed to leaving it up to the employers. Is that your understanding?

Dr. Jay Varma: Yes it's my understanding as well, too. The justification for that is, New York City is the single most vulnerable place to the evolution of this new virus because of our interconnectivity and our density. Just look at at what happened in March of 2020. Look at what's happened with every other variant, we're the first to be hit, we need to increase our defenses. It's the same reason we have a massive police force and counterterrorism force that rivals or exceeds most nations capacity. Why? Because the threat is greater here and the vulnerability is greater here. This is just very basic risk management, and it doesn't apply just infectious diseases applies to anything else.

Brian Lehrer: Were these other cities that didn't have the private sector vaccine mandate hit any harder by Omicron, than we were?

Dr. Jay Varma: That's a good question and I don't know, it's one of the challenges with COVID, is that it's really challenging to tease out the data in real-time. What we'll need to look at over time is things that we call excess mortality. Exactly how many people did end up dying, not just because of they were diagnosed with COVID but for any reason, related to that.

It's difficult to say right now, what I can say for sure because we've done this analysis, I've done it in partnership with my city colleagues, is that the combination of policies that New York City put place in 2021, the vaccine requirement for bars, restaurants, gyms, the vaccine employer mandate for city workers had a dramatic impact on increasing our vaccination rates. It boosted our rates well above counties that you can compare us to, and so the employer mandate is just part of that whole package that's necessary.

Brian Lehrer: Justine in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Justine: Hi, thank you for taking my call. Call me a cynic but I have to ask, does the mayor's announcement have something to do with the fact that Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets, and by the way, I'm a Mets fan, donated a million and a half dollars to his campaign?

Brian Lehrer: You're from Queens, first of all, you better be a Mets fan calling from Astoria, but I didn't know that one way or another Steve Cohen, the deep-pocketed new owner of the Mets, who seems to be doing a lot to improve the team, was he a big donor to the Eric Adams campaign? Do you know Dr. Varma?

Dr. Jay Varma: I don't know. I think it's clear though, that baseball season really did have more of an impact. I think the Yankees and maybe the Mets have a lot of power here, but one of the things that the issues I just wanted to raise slightly tangentially this is I keep getting-- You hear the mayor say this and other people say well, it just basic fairness, our sports teams need to be on the same level rules as everybody else. Okay, so are you going to now give tax exemptions, the Jets just lost out to signing a star wide receiver Tyreke Hill, he chose to go to Florida for the Dolphins because they have lower tax rates. When does this end?

We as a city have different rules because we have different risks, and we have different needs. I think that applies equally as well to vaccinations as it does to taxes or any other rules that we have to all follow.

Brian Lehrer: Looks like one of my producers just did a quick fact check and Bloomberg did report the $1.5 million donation though. I'm not sure in exactly what form. There are certainly very strict campaign finance limits in the mayoral campaign. Whatever that refers to, but there was something there. Reggie in Bed-Stuy wants to back on your position. Reggie, we've got 30 seconds for you. Hi.

Reggie: Performing musicians have been horribly hurt by the vaccine mandates, but a lot of these same musicians, we can work down south. We can work in Florida. We can work in Texas. I totally support the mayor on this and this mandate would absolutely turn me off about our previous Mayor de Blasio.

Brian Lehrer: Reggie, thank you by the way, to clarify that donation, one more time. The donation reportedly was to Adam's political action committee, which does not have the same limits donating to a campaign. Dr. Varma, we have 30 seconds for your last word. Talk to Reggie.

Dr. Jay Varma: I understand that some people don't want to get vaccinated, but the data on vaccination is crystal clear. Hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated. Virtually, nobody has suffered any long-term harm from the vaccine. Millions and millions of people have been infected with COVID and 1 million Americans have died. The [unintelligible 00:11:28] best way to protect that, if you look at our data, any data around the country is by vaccinations. It's unfortunate that some people choose not to get vaccinated, but we have lot lots of rules in New York City that keep people from wanting to come here for work.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners we're going to pick up this topic as our first segment tomorrow morning. For now, we thank Dr. Varma from Weill Cornell Medicine for reacting to the breaking news of the mayor. Dr. we appreciate it.

Dr. Jay Varma: Great. Thank you.

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