It stokes unnecessary fear.

If you are telling people that the level of danger from Covid is increasing and that they should wear masks, you can not simultaneously tell them to engage in the most unnecessary and undesirable indoor activity they can do. Nor can companies insist on employees coming back to the office when said employees can respond that the city is saying the Covid risk is high enough to require masks.

There’s a reason that offices are the last thing that should open when Covid is over. If you have a desk job, you can work from home better than you can replicate any other human activity from home, and all of those other things are ones that people actually want to do.

Back in 2020 there were some ideas otherwise, but I was pretty blunt telling the partners at my firm (80% or whom were in their 60s or 70s) that absolutely no one is coming back to the office when the government still says they can’t go to a restaurant, bar or gym. And I was right of course.

That's quite a leap from the public health agency sending out a recommendation to being incompatible with returning to the office. That's like saying a recommendation to wear a condom is incompatible with sex.

Plus, if we're to get back to normal, elevated cases are inevitable. We can't flip out and yearn for masks every time stats trend a certain way. This Eric Adams is just asking to be a one-termer.

C'mon lol. This is ridiculous. First, Eric Adams shouldn't dictate what recommendations the public health agencies advise. That's how we got into this mess in the first place. Second, it's an advisory, it's not a mandate. I'm sitting in an office right now with no mask and I'm surrounded by people not wearing masks.

Public health doesn't set policy or mandates, the city does and if he's expecting blow back, he should get in front of it and say masks are optional. Many people in 'blue' cities are wondering if/ when their leaders will drag this shit on. .

He doesn't need to say anything lol. The NYC public health agency issues advisories all the time about everything. Nobody is confusing this with a mandate.

Public health departments should set mandates and policy concerning public health issues, which COVID-19 is.

As for working from home, when you realize that people often waste as much time in the office as they would in their own home, there isn't a strong argument to get people into the office to "increase productivity". Now, if you work in hospitality, retail, healthcare, etc, in which being around people is a fundamental part of the job, yeah, you kinda can't do that at home.

^ don't forget isolated alone in your house all day isn't exactly healthy either. I and most of my coworkers are looking forward to RTO. My cats will miss me though.

Because it's political and has been five minutes after this all started. If masks went off as soon as mandates were lifted, that means people absolutely have had enough. Every time a health department makes an advisement, the public then looks to the government about what restrictions might be handed down. It's why everyone was in a rush to drop them well ahead of the midterms. Because politics.

^ This.

People don't understand this basic concept. Particularly one major political party

^ I hear that when airports in Chicago ended the indoor mask mandate, people on airplanes and in the airports applauded.

You bet people hate it. This kind of "mandating" is very unpopular.

^Unpopular for a specific amount of forumers that can be easily listed.
People from other states are furious at NYC, so I guess they won't be voting for Adams in a few years. Oh wait, they wouldn't be anyway :haha:.
Maskaphobes gonna phobe and I thought no politics in here?

… if sex was something that most people wanted no part of, but were being forced into by their employer, and then public health authorities said that it wasn’t safe without a condom.

Employees don’t want to go back to the office. They can point to this and refuse to do so, and their employers can’t do shit. That will 100% be the advice of their legal counsel to HR as well.

If employers want their employees in the office then they'll just tell them to be there. Plenty of employers have done so throughout the pandemic. A mask advisory has nothing to do with it.

Except that no, this isn’t the case. At least certainly not for white collar professionals in Manhattan. This is why all the banks pushed back their “back to office” dates 14 times.

Yeah, seriously lol. Also, the only mask mandates that NYC has been under for most of the pandemic have come from the state anyway. The only current mask mandates, mostly for public transit, are state mandates.

Hi, white collar worker in Manhattan speaking here. The only reason people are continuing to work from home is because their employers allow them to. No other reason. If the employer said everybody needs to return then they'd go back in tomorrow.

That's true, I should have clarified that. If I were to work at home, I would still be out and about. I have a friend who works in tech and he can work at home, in his car, in a coffee shop, at WeWork, etc. Better than just being in one place, which would sorta be required if he had to go in to work to be supervised.:haha:

But they won’t and can’t do that, and this new recommendation further weakens their hand in doing so.

Nor can they really compel anyone. They can threaten to fire them but then they would be sued, and quite possibly lose.

Yes, they can. No, they would not lose.