It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at what unvaccinated health care workers in New York decided to do when faced with losing their jobs. We’ll also look at a man who is still on the lonely job he took early in the pandemic.
Health care workers in New York have rushed to get vaccinated in the last few days, an indication that a state-mandated deadline had made the difference for thousands of holdouts whose resistance had threatened their jobs. By the time the rule went into effect just after midnight Tuesday, 92 percent of the state’s 600,000 hospital and nursing home workers had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, state officials reported.
That left roughly 48,000 unvaccinated, about half as many as a week ago.
Some hospitals and nursing homes remain concerned about potential staffing shortages. But officials said the last-minute inoculations had lessened the likelihood of worst-case scenarios that would prompt institutions to assign nurses to longer shifts or limit nonemergency care.
“All of a sudden, there were consequences, and consequences make a difference,” said Dr. Sheldon Landesman, an infectious disease specialist and professor at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. “Losing your job, losing your paycheck, that’s a serious consequence.” The economic reality erased holdouts’ fears that the vaccines were not safe and resentment that they could be required to take them, he said.
Opposition to the vaccine mandate persists, as it does in other states. At least eight lawsuits challenging it have been filed, some citing First Amendment objections and others claiming that the state should recognize immunity from prior infection as equivalent to vaccination. In several federal cases, health care workers demanding religious exemptions have won the right to keep working for now.
Still, it was clear that once-reluctant health care workers had changed their minds as the deadline approached. In the New York City public hospital system, more than 8,000 workers were unvaccinated a week ago. By Monday, the number had dropped to about 5,000 — or just over 10 percent of the work force. City officials said they could manage the gaps and that the system would continue to function safely.
The number of unvaccinated employees at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx had also plummeted in the last few days. Dr. Eric Appelbaum, the chief medical officer, said some employees — anxious about getting a shot, for whatever reasons — had apparently ignored the mandate when it was announced last month.
But the deadline was impossible to ignore, he said. As recently as last Wednesday, more than 20 percent of the hospital’s roughly 3,000 staff members had yet to get their first dose. By Tuesday, just 3 percent remained unvaccinated.
Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency on Monday night that will allow her to dispatch the National Guard to cover staff shortages at hospital and nursing homes if needed. She has also waived licensing requirements so that out-of-state doctors and nurses could be hired in New York.
Weather
It’s a sunny day, New York, with temps in the mid-60s. For the partly cloudy evening in the mid-50s, you might opt for a cozy movie night. Maybe a silent film. It’s National Silent Movie Day, after all.
alternate-side parking
Suspended today (Simhat Torah).
The latest New York news
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R. Kelly’s case could represent a turning point for the #MeToo movement. This is how the Black women around Mr. Kelly’s case feel about his conviction.
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R. Kelly’s convictions met a muted response in the music business that made him a star, and survivors and activists say the field has a responsibility to do more.
Other Big Stories
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Jumaane D. Williams, the left-wing New York City public advocate, announced an exploratory committee for governor.
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In the Bronx, widely shared videos captured a clash between the authorities and one of thousands of unlicensed vendors.
Still alone in a Midtown hotel
Robert Mallia is still on the job.
The job is to be the only occupant of a Manhattan hotel that shut down early in the pandemic. The job involves flushing every toilet once a week. It also involves turning on every shower twice a month and then turning every shower off.
Alone in an empty hotel, he forgot one once. The next time he made the rounds of the Chatwal Hotel at 130 West 44th Street, steam was seeping into the hallway. He worried that a bomb had gone off in a room that no one had checked into, or out, of in months.
Officially, Mallia is the architectural director for the Dream Hotel Group, which operates the Chatwal. After a year and a half in a century-old building he helped convert to a hotel in 2008, he is “a little homesick” for his apartment in Long Island City, Queens.
“It’s going to be somewhat difficult going back to my somewhat comfortable apartment after living in a five-star room for all this time,” he said. “It wouldn’t be difficult to live here another six months.”
Mallia’s room at the Chatwal is one of the least expensive in the 76-room hotel. It would cost $595 a night if the hotel were open, $2,655 less than a suite with a small living room, a separate bedroom and a kitchenette — something he wishes his room had because cooking for one in the hotel’s large main kitchen was intimidating.
“For me to boil an egg, that would be excessive — I order in,” he said. As when Crain’s New York Business and The New York Post described his unusual existence in May, he mostly spends his free time by himself, in his room, but a security guard is posted at the front door.
The Chatwal has never had an Eloise, like the fictional 6-year-old children’s book heroine of the Plaza, which reopened in May. It has no cat, like the Algonquin down the block. But the cat is not on the prowl for the ghost of Dorothy Parker these days — it went home with someone on the staff when the Algonquin closed for the pandemic.
Like the Chatwal, the Algonquin has not announced plans to reopen, and the contagious Delta variant appears to be making travelers skittish. In August, hotel occupancy dropped to 62 percent, from nearly 70 percent at the end of July, according to the Hotel Association of New York City.
At the Chatwal, Mallia cannot go swimming — the pool was drained after the last paying guests checked out — and he celebrated his birthday alone. When he turned 36 there last November, he asked about inviting a couple of friends over.
He said his bosses told him “that wouldn’t go down well, given that I was here for a specific function and not to live it up.”
“So nothing happened,” he said. “It was just another day.”
What we’re reading
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The Atlantic interviewed people who were third graders at a school near ground zero in 2001. They reflect on the two decades since the Sept. 11 attacks.
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How to save New York’s cabdrivers? The city should adopt a plan put forward by the Taxi Workers Alliance, argues Katharina Pistor, a professor at Columbia Law School, in a guest essay for Opinion.
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In a Q. and A. with Grub Street, Eric Adams talked about plant-based eating and suggests we change the way we think about food.
METROPOLITAN diary
Encounter with a vampire
Dear Diary:
It was the 1960s, and I was commuting from New Jersey into the city for acting classes and auditions. To earn some money, I took a job selling men’s toiletries at Stern’s department store on 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue.
Besides the mild headaches I got from smelling so much cologne, the job had its perks. So many interesting people would pass by that I never got bored.
One day, a man in a cape came sweeping through the aisles and stopped at my counter. It was the actor Jonathan Frid in his role as Barnabas Collins.
Someone with him asked if I would like to take some publicity pictures with daytime TV’s resident vampire.
Yes, I said immediately.
Mr. Frid bared his fangs. I was told to brandish a bottle of perfume and act scared.
I tried not to laugh. (Some actress!)
One day years later, my acting career long dead and buried, I happened to think of the encounter and to wonder whether copies of the pictures existed.
I called ABC’s publicity department and I soon had a couple of 8x10 glossies of me and the star of “Dark Shadows” in the men’s toiletries department at Stern’s.
— Janet Kolstein
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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