Mayor Turner orders unvaxxed city employees to get tested twice a week

So maybe get vaccinated, and avoid all the hassle.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Unvaccinated city workers must get tested for COVID-19 twice a month and report their results to the human resources department, Mayor Sylvester Turner announced Wednesday.

Turner signed an executive order implementing the policy,which takes effect Oct 8. It will allow some exemptions for religious and medical reasons.

The plans come as the city regularly has had more than 300 active cases of the virus among its workforce, Turner said. The latest numbers showed 342 workers with the virus, including 129 police, 161 municipal and 52 fire department employees.

Those cases hamper city operations, the mayor said.

“When you have 129 police officers with COVID, they’re not able to perform their jobs. Same thing with municipal workers, and, for example, permitting, that slows things down,” Turner said. “Simply don’t want them to get sick and don’t want anybody, anybody to die.”

[…]

The policy will apply to all police, fire and municipal staff who have not been fully vaccinated. It will not apply to elected officials or appointed members to the city’s boards and commissions.

The fire, police and municipal workers unions did not respond to requests for comment on Turner’s plan.

Turner said staff will face disciplinary action if they do not comply.

“It could even cost you your job,” the mayor said.

The mayor in recent weeks had teased a policy to encourage vaccinations, saying many city workers have not gotten their shots.

Mayor Turner implemented a mask mandate for city employees in early August. As far as I know, that executive order has not been involved in any of the lawsuits over mandates and Greg Abbott’s ban on them. This is a step up from that – it’s not a vaccine mandate per se, but it’s pretty close and I doubt Greg Abbott or Ken Paxton will split hairs. (They already have a reason to be whipped into a frenzy about this.) Whether or not cities can issue vaccine mandates is on the agenda for the next special session. What I’m saying is, I don’t know how long I expect this policy to last. And that’s before we hear of the inevitable resistance from the police and firefighter unions – police unions around the country have been staunch resisters of vaccine mandates, and we know how well the Mayor and the HPFFA get along. I support what the Mayor is doing here – if anything, I’d want to see the testing be more frequent – I just doubt he’ll be able to fully implement it. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

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8 Responses to Mayor Turner orders unvaxxed city employees to get tested twice a week

  1. David Fagan says:

    34 days and counting………

  2. Jason Hochman says:

    Wait, can’t the vaccinated still get infected and spread the virus? So why aren’t they being tested?

    Oh Party of Science, please explain the science behind this to a poor moron such as I.

  3. J says:

    Two reasons. First, cases among the vaccinated are rare, so is is not worth it to test them. Second, the rare vaccinated person with Covid isn’t contagious for very long, so again a waste of resources to test them.

  4. Jason Hochman says:

    J, two incorrect reasons. It’s time to stop calling them “breakthrough” cases.

    First, just as one example, in some counties in Maryland, 30-40% of hospitalized patients are fully vaccinated and the rate is rising quickly.
    https://www.wbaltv.com/article/covid-19-vaccine-hospitalization-maryland/37503110

    Second, I’m not sure where you get the info that the “rare” vaccinated person with Covid isn’t contagious for “very long,” which is not a scientific term (is that hours? days? weeks?), but it is also insane that we would be OK if I went to work with Covid and spread it, but not for very long, but long enough to kill every single one of my coworkers.

    Of course, this is all part of the Big Lie, which denies that there is a survival rate over 99% and that most (of course not all) fatal cases were over 80 years old or morbese.

  5. Manny says:

    Jason, you need to unglue yourself from Fox or whatever nutting faux news you are watching or reading.

    Don’t drive I-69 underneath 610, as there is a chance an amino truck could land on you.

    If you want to stop elephants from invading your home, walk in a small circle throwing shredded paper over your left shoulder.

    Do you know why elephants have flat feet?

    They jump from trees.

    Do you know why you can’t go into the jungle between 3 and 5?

    That is when the elephants jump off the trees.

    Do you know why pygmies are small?

    They went into the jungle between 3 and 5.

    Jason, where does one join the Hatter Association?

  6. john says:

    34 days? I thought it was supposed to be in september

  7. B says:

    Then what happened to Israel?

  8. robert says:

    Jason,

    this should be the take away :

    For those wondering what’s the point of getting the vaccine if they can still get COVID-19 and get sick enough to need an infusion treatment, the experts weighed in.

    “It’s critical to get your vaccine to decrease your chance of getting hospitalized, and also it turns out, long-COVID, those lingering symptoms, are much less likely to happen in the vaccinated as well, so there are a lot of good reasons to get vaccinated,” Kalyanaraman said.

    Now if EVERYONE that can be vaccinated, would. This thing would be controlled better.

    Everyone at Fox has been vaccinated, the politicians that talk BS about the vaccine are vaccinated, yet their herd continues the antivax crap, it’s mind blowing.

    I’ve had so many vaccines in my life and until recently, I don’t recall ever being this many lunatics about vaccines.

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