Ohio's lawyer arguing at the Supreme Court against OSHA vaccine-or-test mandate for workers is arguing remotely today because he tested positive for the virus as part of the Supreme Court's own test mandate for lawyers. Confirmed via @tomhals
Breyer, J.: "Are you really asking this Court... to issue a stay from taking effect. Like issue a stay today? ...there were three-quarter of a million new cases yesterday that was ten times more than when OSHA put in this ruling, the hospitals are full..."
The idea that they would be (1) debating and (2) considering this at this specific moment in time is going to be an entire chapter in someone's book.
Imagine if there was this much hemming and hawing every time we wanted to go to war. Or every time a megabank was about to go belly up.
"Save lives now, sort out the details later" really only applies when there aren't actual lives on the line on American soil.
" Hey OP, listen to my advice alright." -Tha General "“I like taking the guns early...to go to court would have taken a long time. So you could do exactly what you’re saying, but take the guns first, go through due process second.” -President Donald Trump. "...To guard, protect, and maintain his liberty, the freedman should have the ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the Ballot-box, the Jury-box, and the Cartridge-box, that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country." - Frederick Douglass MYT
LordMortis wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:06 pm
What sort of treatment do you suppose he got while not having COVID for two weeks out of sight?
Anything and everything that's available to a wealthy white man in a high-level government office position. It's why Chris Christie is alive and not a statistic somewhere.
LordMortis wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:06 pm
What sort of treatment do you suppose he got while not having COVID for two weeks out of sight?
No. No. He said he was supporting his wife getting cancer treatment. And by said it I mean he accused the media of being monsters for hounding him as he cared for his stricken wife. Forget that he didn't tell anyone this and just vanished. In any case, a massive overreaction about a major state Governor vanishing from the earth without a trace in the midst of a huge surge in the disease he has been downplaying. That sure doesn't sound newsworthy. He then treated his supposedly very, very sick wife the next day to a packed political event. You know because her health is top priority.
The verdict is in Smoove_B. The pandemic is coming to an end. It's basically over, right?
Edit: I had to recollect it but Monica Gandhi also predicted we were in the endgame in September. It doesn't matter if you are right. It just matters if you say the right things!
She is one of the public health voices that I am convinced is making money off all this somehow. She has consistently been hot trash the entire time, but I guess she's speaking and writing the narrative lots of people want to hear so she's being published and is on various national news programs all the damn time.
Because waiting in line for COVID test is something we're all eager to do?
For my one and only COVID test to date, I hopped online and found a place I could make an appointment early that same day. Of course the game has changed since then.
Edit: I had to recollect it but Monica Gandhi also predicted we were in the endgame in September. It doesn't matter if you are right. It just matters if you say the right things!
Excerpt from WaPo article on Supreme Court ruling:
A majority of justices seemed inclined to agree with private businesses and Republican-led states that OSHA’s proposed action seemed more in line with what states or Congress might dictate, rather than a federal agency.
Such a workplace requirement “sounds like the sort of thing that states will be responding to or should be, and that Congress should be responding to or should be, rather than agency by agency, the federal government, the executive branch acting alone,” said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
And letting the states and Congress take the lead on a public health emergency like Covid is just the thing we need to manage this crisis. I had a whole bunch of expletives but at this point why bother. You win Covid. You win.
"Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?"
-Michelle Obama 2024 Democratic Convention
Wise words of warning from Smoove B: Oh, how you all laughed when I warned you about the semen. Well, who's laughing now?
Alefroth wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:49 pm
That 'unless' is doing a lot of work.
Maybe we shouldn't be depending on 'unless' not happening, especially if it is dependent on global vaccine equity.
That unless looks decidely worse when the same person said this in September - but keep quoting her Washington Post. For balance or something. I totally get why trust in our institutions is falling. There is never any damn accountability for being wrong.
“I truly, truly think we are in the endgame,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist and professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “The cases will start plummeting in mid- to late September and by mid-October, we will be in a manageable place, where the virus is a concern for health professionals, but not really for the general public.”
Gandhi bases her optimism on the fact that all previous epidemics of respiratory viruses have ended through the acquisition of immunity, whether by vaccination or natural infection. Although viruses do keep changing, potentially circumventing people’s defenses, “they mutate quickly, at a cost to themselves,” weakening over time. Gandhi said she believes the delta variant has hit the United States so hard that this summer will mark the peak of this virus’s strength.
I like how it assumes that everyone that would want to get tested in person will actually get tested the same day (and that no one uses home testing).
You can send your ballot electronically. You can't send your bodily fluids electronically.
But hey, I'll play, Texas GOP.
"If you can register to vote, you can register to own a firearm..."
" Hey OP, listen to my advice alright." -Tha General "“I like taking the guns early...to go to court would have taken a long time. So you could do exactly what you’re saying, but take the guns first, go through due process second.” -President Donald Trump. "...To guard, protect, and maintain his liberty, the freedman should have the ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the Ballot-box, the Jury-box, and the Cartridge-box, that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country." - Frederick Douglass MYT
malchior wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:27 pm
The verdict is in Smoove_B. The pandemic is coming to an end. It's basically over, right?
Edit: I had to recollect it but Monica Gandhi also predicted we were in the endgame in September. It doesn't matter if you are right. It just matters if you say the right things!
I don't know anything about Gandhi or her opinions on COVID, but this idea that omicron could well result in the last big wave of the pandemic is certainly one I've seen from many other sources. It's not like the Post is out on an island on this. This past Monday's Daily podcast from the NYT had Carl Zimmer on as a guest, and he came to the same conclusion - maybe a little less emphatically. But definitely echoing the notion that the silver lining of omicron is that it could be the end game.
To be clear, it's not like Zimmer was proposing that development of natural immunity and COVID being endemic was an optimal outcome - his position was that going this route would end up resulting in many, many unnecessary deaths. But he also saw omicron as a likely end to the pandemic.
Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there -- Radiohead
Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me? 😳
malchior wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:27 pm
The verdict is in Smoove_B. The pandemic is coming to an end. It's basically over, right?
Edit: I had to recollect it but Monica Gandhi also predicted we were in the endgame in September. It doesn't matter if you are right. It just matters if you say the right things!
I don't know anything about Gandhi or her opinions on COVID, but this idea that omicron could well result in the last big wave of the pandemic is certainly one I've seen from many other sources. It's not like the Post is out on an island on this. This past Monday's Daily podcast from the NYT had Carl Zimmer on as a guest, and he came to the same conclusion - maybe a little less emphatically. But definitely echoing the notion that the silver lining of omicron is that it could be the end game.
To be clear, it's not like Zimmer was proposing that development of natural immunity and COVID being endemic was an optimal outcome - his position was that going this route would end up resulting in many, many unnecessary deaths. But he also saw omicron as a likely end to the pandemic.
Sure but they are selling something we want to hear and maybe they are saying it because they want it to be true. Which is what I was getting at with her. She over and over sold false optimism and people put her on tv because it got clicks. It didn't inform us. It didn't prepare us properly and it probably caused more harm than good. Until it *actually* ends we have to keep assuming the worst case or else we just keep throwing lives away. That is why I don't care if omicron theoretically could work out because a variant could come along tomorrow and reset this discussion again. When we see COVID recede for real I'll feel better but even then we don't know if it'll come roaring back a month later. There has been just too much false ends already.
It also glosses over big open questions I keep hearing. Such are how long does protection last? Being that Omicron is super contagious, do we have to get boosters every 4 months or have waves of this over and over? We don't know. We also haven't thought through what wave after wave of this looks like even if it becomes "normal". Do we have a virus running around indefinitely that quarterly or annually takes down our health care system? We just don't know those things yet but we have people forecasting the end of the pandemic as likely? I don't know how to accurately handicap it but I do know that Americans love fantasy thinking. And that's partly what I see here. Omicron is just the latest "easy" off ramp in a long list of them. I find myself saying this a lot - on a variety of topics - I hope it works out but I really want to see evidence before I accept it.
If the Supreme Court is worried about Congressional powers, how about letting the Congress vote to overrule Biden’s policy decision?
"A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on." -Terry Pratchett, The Truth "The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they've found it." -Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
Zarathud wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:01 pm
If the Supreme Court is worried about Congressional powers, how about letting the Congress vote to overrule Biden’s policy decision?
That'd make sense since the administration is arguing they are using the power granted to them by Congress in the first place. Apparently authority on that diminishes based on blowing political winds time.
This is what bullshit “founders intent” misses. Justice Clarence Thomas is going to say the States didn’t believe in health departments — or public health — in 1776 so it can’t be permitted by the Constitution.
But witch burning would be under that logic. As well as spreading smallpox.
"A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on." -Terry Pratchett, The Truth "The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they've found it." -Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
Zarathud wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:28 pm
This is what bullshit “founders intent” misses. Justice Clarence Thomas is going to say the States didn’t believe in health departments — or public health — in 1776 so it can’t be permitted by the Constitution.
I'd love to hear what Justice Thomas thinks about:
John Adams, second President of the United States, signed into law on July 16, 1798 the Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen, which established what is now the Public Health Service. Twenty cents was deducted from the monthly wage of each merchant seaman to build or rent hospitals and pay for the medical care provided.
Smoove_B wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 12:07 am
He is legitimately conducting an active disinformation campaign that is making things worse and absolutely nothing can be done about it.
Not only can't we stop him but it buying him more and more power.
In response to a severe outbreak of yellow fever, in 1798 President John Adams signed the first Federal health law, "An Act for the relief of sick and disabled Seamen." From this act grew the Marine Hospital Service and the birth of modern American medicine.
I think everyone is going to keep getting infected for a while....vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. But over time the unvaccinated will continue to be sicker and die off.
--------------------------------------------
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When in doubt, skewer it out...I don't know.
