LA City Council officials protest vaccination regulations outside City Hall – NBC Los Angeles

Hundreds of people, including some Los Angeles city officials, protested against COVID-19 vaccination regulations in front of City Hall on Monday in a demonstration organized by Firefighters4Freedom.

Dozens of people in the crowd wore clothing indicating their employment with the Los Angeles City and County Fire Services, Los Angeles Department of Water and Energy, Los Angeles County’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and other government agencies.

Many people, who appeared to be government employees, declined to be interviewed, but some staff said they were willing to lose their jobs because of the city’s vaccination mandate, which they keep until December 18 to comply.

The city’s labor negotiators have made a “final offer” to the workers’ unions – get the chance or lose your job before Christmas. Eric Leonard got this exclusive story on October 19, 2021.

Los Angeles firefighter Scott Tomlin said he was ready to lose his job “because I’m not ready to lose my life because of it”.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says reports of deaths following a COVID-19 vaccine are extremely rare and there is no proven causal link between the vast majority of these deaths and COVID-19 vaccines.

The CDC warns of a “plausible causal link” between Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine and a rare blood clot event called TTS, which occurred at the rate of seven per 1 million vaccinated women between the ages of 18 and 49. The CDC examined five reported deaths related to complications from TTS after the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. By mid-October, more than 15 million people in the United States had received this vaccine.

Several people at the rally noted that Mayor Eric Garcetti recently tested positive for COVID-19, indicating to them that the vaccines don’t even offer protection from the virus. However, the CDC reports that unvaccinated people are 6.1 times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated and 11.3 times more likely to die from the virus than those who do have been vaccinated.

As of Sunday, 754,051 people in the United States have died of COVID-19, 72,698 of them in California.

According to the Los Angeles Employee Vaccination Order, employees have until December 18 to get vaccinated or apply for a religious or medical exemption. Garcetti said on October 20 that any city worker who refuses to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by December 18 should be prepared to lose his or her job.

“The city’s employee vaccination mandate is critical to protecting the health and safety of our workforce and the Angelenos we serve,” he said.

“Employees must be vaccinated by December 18, and we have a rigorous testing program in place in the meantime. To be clear, any employee who refuses to be vaccinated by that date should be ready to give theirs Lose job. “

Through December 18, unvaccinated employees are required to have two COVID-19 tests per week, and $ 65 per test will be deducted from their salary. Employees must be tested in their spare time and the tests must be carried out by the city or a provider of their choice. Third party testing is not allowed.

The union, which represents Los Angeles police officers, filed a lawsuit against the city for demanding employees pay out of pocket for their tests.

Individuals applying for a religious or medical exemption must take two tests per week at their own expense while the city processes the exemption request. If an exception is approved, the employee will be reimbursed for the testing cost and will need to be tested for COVID-19 once a week from now on, but the city pays for it.

If an exemption request is rejected, the employee has five working days to file an objection. If they do not appeal the decision, they will be notified that they must provide proof of vaccination. Otherwise “corrective action” would be taken.

The employee can either quit or retire if he does not do the job. These employees can also be reinstated if they are vaccinated or if the vaccination order is canceled.

Requests for exceptions will be examined on a case-by-case basis. People can qualify for an exemption if they have an illness or have serious religious beliefs, practices, or customs that prevent them from getting the vaccine.

“How can we ask Angelenos to get vaccinated if we don’t do it ourselves? We must be a strong example to our churches. The vaccines are available, they are effective, and they keep people out of and out of the hospital. “Ventilators,” said Council President Nury Martinez when the regulation was approved in August.

Many workers who do not want the vaccines say it is a matter of personal freedom and some express doubts about the safety or effectiveness of the vaccines. Proponents of the mandate say unvaccinated people can put others – including those not eligible for the vaccines – at risk.