Supreme Court hears arguments on forced vaccination in two parallel universes
The Supreme Court recently took up the question of whether elderly elites can order young peasants to get vaccinated against a virus that attacks the elderly. The argument took place in two parallel universes.
Let’s first check my usual source for truth… “Conservative Majority on Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Biden’s Virus Plan” (New York Times):
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the states and Congress, rather than a federal agency, were better situated to address the pandemic in the nation’s workplaces. Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the challenged regulation appeared to reach too broadly in covering all large employers.
The court’s three more liberal justices said the mandate was a needed response to the public health crisis.
“We know the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated,” Justice Elena Kagan said.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he would find it “unbelievable that it would be in the public interest to stop these vaccinations.”
The NYT has one sentence regarding Sonia Sotomayor, the self-described “wise Latina”:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has diabetes and has worn a mask since the justices returned to the courtroom in October, participated remotely from her chambers.
What about the Deplorables over at the Washington Examiner? “Liberal Supreme Court justices spread COVID-19 misinformation”:
Kagan began by claiming “the best way” to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is “for people to get vaccinated,” and the “second best way” is to “wear masks.” Neither claim is true. While the vaccines appear to slow the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the chance of death, there is absolutely no evidence that they prevent transmission, especially not against the much more contagious omicron variant. The cloth masks mandated in different parts of the country don’t prevent the spread of the virus either, as several public health experts have recently admitted.
Breyer continued to spread misinformation by falsely claiming that 750 million people — there are only 330 million people living in the United States — tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. That would mean every single one of us tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday twice.
Breyer then implied, like Kagan before him, that Biden’s vaccine mandate would bring the number of daily cases down to zero. Again, this is not true. Fully vaccinated and boosted adults are testing positive for COVID-19 at about the same rate as unvaccinated people, which means everyone is going to get the virus one way or the other, vaccinated or unvaccinated.
But the worst falsehoods by far came from Sotomayor, who claimed the omicron variant is just as deadly as the delta variant was and that more than 100,000 children have been hospitalized by COVID-19, with “many” on ventilators.
he current national pediatric COVID-19 census from the Department of Health and Human Services shows 3,342 children with COVID-19 in hospitals. And, as Anthony Fauci admitted last week, there is a huge difference between children hospitalized by COVID-19 and those hospitalized with COVID-19. The vast majority of pediatric cases are from children hospitalized with COVID-19, meaning they were hospitalized by something else first and happened to test positive at about that same time.
“If you look at the children [who] are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” Fauci said last week. “What we mean by that is that if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID, and they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that.”
There is almost no overlap between what the NYT reported as having happened and what the Washington Examiner reported as having happened.
How about the Sotomayor 100,000? That’s a lot of hospitalized and/or ventilated kids. But could we ever establish the truth or falsehood of her statement? I thought the whole point of the U.S. is that we can’t distinguish between people who go to the hospital because of COVID-19 or who go to the hospital for some other reason and then happen to test positive for what might be an asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Readers: Who wants to guess the outcome? (and when will the Supreme Court rule?) I’m 95 percent sure that the Supreme Court says it is okay for President Biden to order the health care industry around. The health care industry is essentially part of our government, with most of the costs socialized (albeit with the profits privatized). I’m less confident regarding the order directed at private employers, but I still think it will be approved since Americans desperately crave central planning and management whenever a crisis is declared. A ruling against President Biden would be taking away the president’s emergency powers. Who on the Supreme Court would be willing to risk a lifetime Facebook and Twitter ban by saying “COVID-19 is not an emergency”?
Related:
- Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism? (infections and transmission in a 95% vaccinated population doesn’t dim anyone’s faith in vaccines)
- Email received today from a hospital in Massachusetts: “As you may know, hospitals and health care providers across the country are busier than ever. The number of hospitalized patients is the highest since the start of the pandemic. The high demand for care and staffing challenges are causing longer than normal wait times for all types of care, which we know can be frustrating.” (Summary: NYT says nearly everyone in the state is vaccinated; CDC says they are therefore protected from severe illness; this email says that the vaccinated righteous are nonetheless hospitalized…)
