Except that doesn't apply to this situation. IIRC, ~95-97% of cops, EMTs and firefighters in NYC were already vaccinated and those that weren't were given ample time (extended several times) to get vaccinated.
As such, that was never an issue.
That said, there certainly was an arbitrary and capricious standard applied in this case.
Also “In 2021, 1,353,500 fires resulted in 3,800 civilian deaths and 14,700 injuries”. By comparison, Wikipedia says there were 42,915 deaths due to motor vehicles in 2021, more than 10x. So it makes sense that even if fire department only dealt with road crashes they would spend more time on that than on fires.
Why does the fire department do medical stuff in the US? Why isn’t it medical people providing paramedics? Seems like something that should be left to professionals?
A lot of firefighters are also EMTs and paramedics. Both because in places with volunteer firefighters they can just work as EMS, and also because there's quite a bit of overlap in that if you need a firefighter there's a decent chance having EMS around would be beneficial as well.
Firefighters who aren't trained in EMS are not providing medical care, so saying "leave it to the professionals" is pretty dismissive in this context.
