NYC’s Indoor Vaccine Mandate Draws Scrutiny from Activists & Business Owners

By: Jared Evan

NYC became the first region in the country, to mandate a vaccine in order to eat in a restaurant, work out in a gym and attend most indoor events.

The Key to NYC pass, announced early August by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, will require vaccination for workers and customers for indoor dining, indoor fitness facilities and indoor entertainment facilities such as performance spaces and movie theaters.

Final details of the policy will be announced and implemented this week, and inspections and enforcement are slated to begin the week of Sept. 13.

Libertarians, liberty, and privacy advocates and have since rallied against, what is being perceived as a violation of medical privacy.

In Europe and Canada, hundreds and thousands of people have protested on a daily basis against vaccine requirements and the concept of showing your medical records before entry to an establishment. They point out that this creates a 2-tier society, is divisive and an intrusion on induvial freedom, and privacy.

Some fierce critics of vaccine requirements believe that these mandates violate of what was determined at the Nuremberg trials. They claim the vaccine is an experimental treatment and forcing induvial to partake in the experiment in order to participate in certain aspects of society is a violation of the Nuremberg code. The vaccine is not, as of press, approved by the FDA, and was granted use under emergency orders, consequently many associate taking the vaccine as being part of an experiment.

The most vocal critics, look at required vaccines, in order to enjoy a movie for example, as coercion.

The Nuremberg Code is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation created by the USA v Brandt court as one result of the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War. In a review written on the 50th anniversary of the Brandt verdict, Katz writes that “a careful reading of the judgment suggests that [the authors] wrote the Code for the practice of human experimentation whenever it is being conducted.

Meanwhile restaurant owners, are looking at the more direct effects these requirements will have on their day-to-day operations.

A restaurant owner, whose restaurant is located between the tourist hotspots of Times Square and Herald Square told the NY Post that handling out-of-towners will add another difficulty in the new policy.

“It seems like more of the locals are on board and understand it, but the tourists and the out-of-towners say, ‘Oh no, that’s the last time you’re going to see me in the city,’” he told CNBC. “It’s a polarizing issue.” It could also cause confusion and pose problems for tourists who received their vaccine in another country.