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NYC Announces New Vaccine Mandate for Cops, Firefighters, City Workers

Associated Press reported:

New York City will require its entire municipal workforce to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be placed on unpaid leave, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, giving an ultimatum to public employees, including police officers and firefighters who have refused the shots and ensuring a fight with some unions representing them.

The Democrat gave approximately 46,000 unvaccinated city employees until Nov. 1 to get their first vaccine dose, and he offered an incentive: City workers who a shot by Oct. 29 at a city-run vaccination site will get an extra $500 in their paycheck.

New York City’s largest police union, the Police Benevolent Association, said getting vaccinated is a “personal medical decision” officers should make in consultation with their doctors.

Leaked Audio: DOJ Official Doesn’t Think Americans ‘Sincere’ Over Religious Exemptions

Zero Hedge reported:

A Biden Justice Department attorney was caught on tape dismissing the sincerity of Americans claiming religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to Lederman, there are “cases, for instance in the New York case that’s currently going on against the State of New York, the Thomas More Society is representing a bunch of doctors and nurses who claim that they would sin gravely in cooperation with the evil of abortion. How would they be doing so?

The claim is that all three of the current vaccines, either have fetal cells that were obtained by abortions in the vaccine itself, or in the case of Pfizer and Moderna that those vaccines were tested using fetal cells that had been aborted, and even the connection to the previous testing, makes them cooperative with evil in a way that their religion prohibits.”

Oregon Releases Names, Vaccination Status of 40,000 Individual Employees by ‘Mistake’: Report

Fox News reported:

The individual names and vaccination statuses of some 40,000 Oregon state employees were mistakenly released to two newspapers, which a labor union is saying breaches an agreement reached with the state last month assuring that the private medical information would remain confidential, according to a report.

The privacy breach reportedly happened Monday, the same day as Gov. Kate Brown’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate deadline for all state employees. Since the governor issued the order in August, The Oregonian/Oregon Live has requested daily information from Brown’s administration on vaccination rates and vaccine exemption rates for each executive branch agency the governor oversees.

1,887 WA Workers Fired, Leave Jobs Due to Vaccine Mandate

Associated Press reported:

More than 1,800 Washington state workers have been fired, resigned or retired due to the state’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, according to data released Tuesday.

Monday was the deadline for thousands of workers in Washington to prove they’ve been fully vaccinated as a condition of their continued employment.

The mandate — issued by Gov. Jay Inslee in August — applies to most state workers, long-term care employees, and teachers and staff at the state’s schools, including the state’s colleges and universities. The only opt-out was a medical or religious exemption, though the exemption only ensured continued employment if a job accommodation could be made.

U.S. Workers Face Job Losses as COVID Vaccine Mandates Kick In

Reuters reported:

Thousands of unvaccinated workers across the United States are facing potential job losses as a growing number of states, cities and private companies start to enforce mandates for inoculation against COVID-19.

In the latest high-profile example, Washington State University (WSU) fired its head football coach and four of his assistants on Monday for failing to comply with the state’s vaccine requirement. The coach, Nick Rolovich, had applied for a religious exemption from the mandate earlier this month.

Thousands of police officers and firefighters in cities like Chicago and Baltimore are also at risk of losing their jobs in the coming days under mandates that require them to report their vaccination status or submit to regular coronavirus testing.

Federal Appeals Court Won’t Stop Health Worker COVID Mandate

Associated Press reported:

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stop the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Maine healthcare workers, setting the stage for another 11th-hour appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel rejected a request for a preliminary injunction, saying opponents of the mandate were unlikely to succeed. The state is due to begin enforcing the mandate on Oct. 29.

The decision was dated Tuesday, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court declined an emergency request to intervene. But the Supreme Court left open the door for another appeal.

A Trooper Defying His State’s Vaccine Mandate Uses His Final Dispatch to Tell Off the Governor

The Washington Post via MSN reported:

In a parting message broadcast across the agency’s dispatch system, he announced that he was “being asked to leave because I am dirty,” referring to his defiance of the state’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for government employees. The 22-year veteran thanked his colleagues — and offered some choice words for the governor.

LaMay’s Friday sign-off, which was shared tens of thousands of times on social media, came as several law enforcement officers and other first responders across the United States resisted coronavirus vaccination and fought mandates.

The U.S. States Where COVID Vaccine Mandates Are Banned and Allowed

Newsweek reported:

Vaccine mandates continue to be a topic of contention in the U.S. after Texas governor Greg Abbott this week failed to pass a new bill into legislature that would have banned employers from mandating such measures.

So vaccine mandates are still effectively banned in Texas, despite the legislature failing to pass. Complications such as this make it difficult to follow which states have actually banned vaccine mandates, which have simply restricted them, and to what extent.

The U.S. National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), which tracks vaccine mandates across the country, provides information on what sort of mandate bans are in place between states.

Insight: The Great New Normal Purge

Technocracy News reported:

So, the Great New Normal Purge has begun … right on cue, right by the numbers.

As we “paranoid conspiracy theorists” have been warning would happen for the past 18 months, people who refuse to convert to the new official ideology are now being segregated, stripped of their jobs, banned from attending schools, denied medical treatment, and otherwise persecuted.

Relentless official propaganda demonizing “the Unvaccinated” is being pumped out by the corporate and state media, government leaders, health officials, and shrieking fanatics on social media. “The Unvaccinated” are the new official “Untermenschen,” an underclass of subhuman “others” the New Normal masses are being conditioned to hate.

Businesses Nervously Await Fine Print of Vax-or-Test Rule

Wavy reported:

More than six weeks after promising a new vaccination-or-testing rule covering the millions of Americans at companies with 100 or more workers, President Joe Biden’s most aggressive move yet to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is almost ready to see the light of day.

Unlike healthcare providers or federal employees, who may not have a testing alternative to vaccination, private sector workers won’t necessarily face termination if they don’t get vaccinated. But some businesses may choose to impose their own more stringent vaccination mandate, and it’s possible that businesses may be allowed to pass on the cost of weekly COVID-19 testing to their unvaccinated employees.

The AI Oracle of Delphi Uses the Wisdom of Reddit to Offer Dubious Moral Advice

The Verge reported:

Got a moral quandary you don’t know how to solve? Fancy making it worse? Why not turn to the wisdom of artificial intelligence, aka Ask Delphi: an intriguing research project from the Allen Institute for AI that offers answers to ethical dilemmas while demonstrating in wonderfully clear terms why we shouldn’t trust software with questions of morality.

Ultimately, Ask Delphi is an experiment, but it’s one that reveals the ambitions of many in the AI community: to elevate machine learning systems into positions of moral authority. Is that a good idea?