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Judge blocks Biden vaccine rule, citing “liberty interests of the unvaccinated”
A federal judge yesterday blocked a Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, granting a request for preliminary injunction filed by Republican attorneys general from 14 states.
US District Judge Terry Doughty ruled that the government lacks authority to implement the rule that "requires the staff of twenty-one types of Medicare and Medicaid healthcare providers to receive one vaccine by December 6, 2021, and to receive the second vaccine by January 4, 2022." Providers that don't comply face penalties, including "termination of the Medicare/Medicaid Provider Agreement."
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate regulates over 10.3 million health care workers in the US, of which 2.4 million are unvaccinated. The Biden vaccine rule is being challenged by the attorneys general from Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. The Republican AGs' lawsuit was filed against CMS and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The preliminary injunction they won applies nationwide except for 10 states that "are already under a preliminary injunction order dated November 29, 2021, issued by the Eastern District of Missouri," a court order said. Those states are Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
What states did not participate in this lawsuit and were not covered by the earlier preliminary injunction — i.e. got swept into this decision?
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District Of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02 2021, @04:43AM (4 children)
When you can drag out your "emergency" indefinitely, some judge has to remind you that Constitution does not come with an "Off" switch.
All this song and dance started with promises of "two weeks". It is nearing two damn years with no end in sight. The "2025" and "forever" have since moved from "conspiracy theories" to EU politicians' mouth noises and, in some places, official documents.
If this is "the new normal", then you do not get emergency powers; if this is "emergency", then the incompetent "experts" need be court-martialed.
(Score: 5, Informative) by dalek on Thursday December 02 2021, @05:03AM (3 children)
The OSH Act of 1970 explicitly imposes a six month limit on emergency standards, after which the normal process for OSHA to make rules must be followed. In fact, I quoted that exact text from the law. This particular emergency standard is most certainly not indefinite.
The "two weeks" comment you reference is in regard to the previous administration, which then had to walk back those statements anyway. This particular emergency standard was put in place because of the surge of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to the Delta variant. Many of the actions taken in the spring of 2020 such as stay at home orders have long since rescinded because the situation has changed and there are more effective ways to deal with COVID.
The "two weeks" of staying at home that the previous administration initially encouraged and the orders issued by state governors were because there weren't better tools available at the time to slow the spread of COVID. We now have the tools to end this pandemic, which are vaccines, antivirals, and much better therapeutics. Ironically enough, fighting against vaccination prolongs the very emergency you are complaining is going on too long.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02 2021, @05:13AM (2 children)
We have your lying arse repeating same old stale lies. HOW the vaccines that do NOTHING to stop the infection, can "end this pandemic"?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/getting-vaccinated-doesn-t-stop-people-from-spreading-delta [bloomberg.com]
And now we have "omicron" which is already promised to disregard the vaccines totally.
If you have antivirals, then by all means produce and distribute them. Not having impunity to violate people's bodies should not be stopping you from that, should it?
(Score: 5, Informative) by dalek on Thursday December 02 2021, @05:32AM (1 child)
I've debunked this particular nonsense many other times already.
Vaccines do reduce the chance of being infected by Delta, particularly after receiving a booster dose. If fewer people have COVID, that means there are fewer people who can spread COVID to others.
People who are vaccinated and have breakthrough infections are also much less likely to require hospitalization. Even if COVID were to spread at exactly the same rate as if nobody had been vaccinated (which isn't true, as I noted), this would still significantly reduce the amount of hospitalizations. The burden on hospitals has caused shortages in staff and resources. This has led to things like postponing elective surgeries. It means people who need hospital care to treat other conditions may not be able to receive the medically necessary care that they need. Again, even if vaccines didn't reduce the spread of COVID, they would still reduce the burden on hospitals.
Again, when people who refuse to be vaccinated take up lots of hospital resources, it makes it harder for other people to receive medical treatment they need. Why should you have the right to risk inflicting that harm on other people, just because you refuse to get a vaccine that is both safe and effective?
It is widely known that vaccines reduce the risk of serious disease. It is also widely known that hospitals have needed to postpone elective surgeries for serious conditions due to the spread of Delta (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/health/covid-hospitals-elective-surgeries.html [nytimes.com]). You know what you're saying is disingenuous. Why do you continue to spread this nonsense?
Maybe what we really need is to develop a vaccine that protects people against bullshit.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday December 02 2021, @06:41PM
We have one: It's called either "critical thinking" or less formally a "bullshit detection kit". Like medical vaccines, it's not 100% effective 100% of the time, but it definitely improves the odds. And also like medical vaccines, there are kids who are too young to get it administered because they haven't developed to the point of being able to handle it, and some who are unable to get it at any point and have to rely on their peers and herd immunity.
And the same people that are trying to stop others from vaccinating against disease are also trying to stop others from gaining even partial immunity to bullshit. Which leads to the conclusion that odds are pretty good that at least some of them are bullshit artists.
For example, your use of critical thinking caused you to actually look at the applicable laws before making pronouncements about it. Whereas the AC you were arguing with plainly did not bother, possibly because they were mindlessly repeating something they heard somewhere, or possibly because they were knowingly spewing bullshit. Unfortunately, in this day and age, it's hard to sort out the dupes versus the liars.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.