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<\/a>Employees at Staten Island University Hospital who are opposed to mandatory vaccination and testing protested last week.Credit…Yana Paskova for The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura Outside Staten Island University Hospital this week, as passing cars and fire trucks honked supportively, some employees chanted, \u201cI am not a lab rat!\u201d They were among the nurses, medical technicians, infection control officers and other staff at the hospital who are denouncing efforts to push them to get vaccinated.<\/p>\n Staten Island has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection of any borough in New York City.<\/p>\n The aggressive opposition to the vaccines, and even to regular testing, at a hospital in New York City \u2014 the epidemic\u2019s onetime epicenter \u2014 shows the challenges of reaching the unvaccinated when some of the very people who could serve as role models refuse vaccination.<\/p>\n Some medical workers at the Staten Island hospital are so fiercely opposed that they call themselves \u201cThe Resistance,\u201d after the rebel faction in \u201cStar Wars.\u201d They are defending what they view as their inherent rights, and their leader is gathering hospital workers from other states in an attempt to create a nationwide movement.<\/p>\n Scientists and medical professionals say that those who refuse vaccines are potentially endangering the lives of patients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe New York Times<\/p>\n