Coronavirus Litigation: Can Employers Require Employee Vaccinations?
The plaintiffs in one of the nation s first court cases over employer-required COVID vaccinations are among the heroes of the pandemic nurses fighting to remain unvaccinated. Houston Methodist Hospital suspended unvaccinated employees on June 6. June 10, 2021, 11am PDT | Irvin Dawid Share High levels of vaccination coverage are the way out of this pandemic,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, emergencies chief at the World Health Organization, reported the Associated Presson on June 7. Ryan estimated that the coverage needed to be 80% to prevent imported, variant-driven infections that are responsible for the surge underway in the U.K.
Opinion: Transit Needs to Be Better, Not Cheaper
With many U.S. transit agencies facing severe gaps in service and budget shortfalls, some advocates argue that improved service matters more than free fares. June 9, 2021, 5am PDT | Diana Ionescu |
Despite a growing movement to make public transit fare-free, Henry Grabar argues in a piece for Slate that getting rid of fares would not help the poorest and most underserved transit riders. Jarrett Walker, a Portland-based transit planner and author of
Human Transit, agrees. I’ve heard people describe the free fare movement as being a movement for free, terrible service, and that’s how the trade-off ends up working if you expect this to happen inside the budget of an impoverished American transit agency. While research shows that low-income riders do use transit more when offered discounts, they also overwhelmingly said reliability was a bigger concern than affordability.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors has approved a program that would eliminate fares for students and low-income riders, but the program's future rests on finding sustainable funding sources.
The Census Bureau released new data on May 27 that includes the first four months of the pandemic. Seattle tops the growth rate at 2.2% from July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2020, while Baltimore and San Francisco land at the bottom with -1.4%.