Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Reasons for Cautious Optimism From Supreme Court Oral Arguments on Vaccine Mandates?
Based on reporting by such disparate sources as The New York Times and Alex Berenson, in my humble opinion one of the most knowledgeable and reliable sources of information and actual, fact-based data on the COVID-19 pandemic and the hysterical overreaction to it, it appears from today’s oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court that the heretofore unknown legal doctrine known as “the Constitutional workaround,” also known as the vaccine mandates, is about to go down in flames. This is just a very brief notice of the arguments and not a researched piece about the various legal points involved, but it does appear that a majority of the justices are ready to hold these incredible overreaches on the part of the current “administration” what many thought they were the day they were announced — blatantly violative of the Constitution of the United States.
Here is the NYT lead, as quoted in the Berenson newsletter:
Conservative Majority on Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Biden’s Virus Plan
The court seemed more likely to sustain a separate requirement that health care workers at facilities that receive federal money be vaccinated.
The Berenson newsletter summarizes the outlook as follows:
The OSHA mandate is clearly at the greatest risk, as it is the biggest reach both legally and medically. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services mandate on health-care workers at least fits with what CMS does, and trying to protect patients from communicable disease is a worthy goal. (Too bad the Covid vaccines don’t stop infection or transmission.)
I suspect the OSHA mandate goes. What happens to health-care workers may depend on whether Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh know the science well enough to understand how useless the vaccines have become. If not, they might just decide to split the difference and allow the CMS mandate to move forward. That would be a (seemingly) reasonable decision, and Roberts likes to seem reasonable…
A good summary of the arguments of this morning can also be found in the New York Post in a column entitled “Divided Supreme Court weighs vax mandates for large companies, health care workers,” which contains these interesting passages about the views expressed by some of the justices:
Conservative members of the court expressed skepticism about the rule, with Justice Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts suggesting the administration had overstepped its bounds. Roberts said it was “hard to argue” that officials had been given the power to act by Congress. Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that a problem with the rule was its broad scope.
At one point, Gorsuch asked Prelogar why OSHA has not mandated vaccines for other viruses such as the flu, which the justice said “kills hundreds of thousands of people a year.” Prelogar responded that COVID-19 is unprecedented, adding that if there was “a similar 1918 influenza outbreak,” then OSHA would consider taking similar measures.
Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito floated a possible administrative stay of the rule – asking Prelogar what a difference of a few days could make since the mandate was announced months ago and has yet to be implemented.
***
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s interventions bordered on the hysterical. At one point, Sotomayor — who took part in arguments remotely — wrongly claimed that 100,000 children were “in serious condition” due to COVID-19, with “many on ventilators.” In fact, the current number of pediatric hospitalizations with the virus stood at 3,342 as of Friday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
As this appeal and oral arguments were granted on an emergency basis, one might be entitled to be optimistic enough to expect a ruling in the very near future. If one, or most optimistically both, of these outrageous abuses of power are reined in, it should give all of us reason to be hopeful that other acts of this lawless administration will be similarly restrained.
Published in GeneralRicochet editors have scheduled this post to be promoted to the Main Feed at 6:40AM (PT) on January 10th, 2022.There are 74 comments.
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
What are these vaccine mandates supposed to accomplish? Preventing infections? Preventing transmission? The vaccines do neither. Therefore, there’s no purpose to them except as a pretext for firing people who disobey the regime.
This should be an easy decision for the court. Which means we’ll probably be disappointed.
Why do people think that the vaccines are ineffective? Is there any reliable information on this?
The CDC website indicates vaccine effectiveness in the 60-90% range against infection, and 80-90%+ against hospitalization. This is consistent with the results that I recall from the last time that I looked into the question, several months ago.
The enormous number of people “fully vaccinated” yet getting and spreading COVID anyway.
This shows the utter futility of mandates.
Anybody want to take Justice Gorsuch to task for saying seasonal flu “kills hundreds of thousands of people a year.” ?
I sure think that’s what good for the gander is good for the goose. Justice Sotomayor said 100,000 children were hospitalized and we savaged her (and rightly so) for not knowing the numbers. I, for one, have to wonder where Gorsuch got that whopper from. Seasonal flu – at its worst – might kill 60,000 in a really bad year. (Excepting the 1918 flu)
Was Barbi right? “Math is hard?” C’mon man.
I know I’m armchair litigating here, but since OSHA is a workplace agency and is basing its orders on workplace “safety,” one or more questions should have been asked about the effects on people of working age. Covid-19’s most serious effects have been on people who have left the workforce (old people who have retired). The effect on working age people might actually be smaller than the effect of the flu (I have not dug for numbers).
Me!
Is this really the type of information upon which you rely in forming opinions about important subjects?
This is not helpful to me.
Thank you; as I was careful to point out, this was not in any way a deeply researched piece on these arguments and the questions you mention might well have been asked– I did not listen to all the audio, but just wanted to briefly note that there was some real reason for optimism based on the comments and questions of the Justices, especially, of course, on the conservative side. Jim.
If you support vaccine mandates, you’re not helpful to America.
The issue of whether the vaccine is effective is irrelevant to the issue of being forced to take vaccines as a condition of employment We’ve accepted required vaccines in limited circumstances, e.g., hospital workers, soldiers, but not across all sectors. With the current mandates, you have to make a choice between working or getting vaccinated so you are being forced to take a vaccine.
Would you agree that your response is a non-sequitur? Do you have any actual information about vaccine effectiveness? Wouldn’t you think that having such information would be important in evaluating the potential public policy responses to this disease?
I would think that it is not the Court’s job to make decisions about medicine or the ins-and-outs of policy but the status of the government’s actions under the law and the Constitution
Effectiveness makes no difference to the argument. The problem is the mandate. The problem is the force. The threat of job loss. The threat of not being able to fully live as a citizen of this country.
Anyone who supports these vaccine mandates is an enemy of freedom. I don’t say that lightly.
It is time for a radical reclamation of American liberty. By which I mean it’s no longer enough to claw back the rights taken from us over the last two years, we must go even farther and reclaim the liberties taken over the last two hundred years.
“The Great Reset” should be resetting America to its original factory settings.
It is of interest to many people that the last product that was developed at a profit by Moderna was the anthrax vaccine that left crippled or dead at least 20% of the US soldiers from 1991, to some years later, who were all mandated to take that jab or else be court martialled.
The fact that our military is forcing its service people to partake of a new round of rushed into development products – which hold no benefits at all to the healthy new recruits already screened as being in top form – should concern any American who wants our nation to maintain a strong military.
Risk to benefit – a major science principle and analysis method that until Corporate Control took over, always held sway before any authorities would administer new remedies into people’s bodies shows how little risk COVID itself is. Since the COV vaxes hold plenty of risk, with only paltry benefit, there is no need to have any single healthy young individual, let alone entire groups of service people, now be exposed to the risks:
@drewinwisconsin
The entire way the vaccine’s efficacy was presented was a subterfuge:
This is nonsense. If you find this convincing, you don’t understand the math involved.
I’ll try to explain.
Imagine that you have a 1% risk (1-in-100) of being murdered in a given year. If you move to a safer neighborhood, that risk decreases to 0.05% (1-in-2000).
The relative risk reduction in this hypothetical is 95%. The absolute risk reduction is 0.95%.
You should move. Obviously.
Expressing the decrease in risk in terms of the absolute risk reduction is seriously misleading. Moving would reduce your risk by a factor of 20, not by a factor of less than 1%.
It seems that people who don’t understand math are easily misled. In the illustration above, the so-called “marketing lie” is the truth. The people doing the misleading are the ones who prepared that graphic.
See both of my posts immediately above this one for numbers.
I like using Sweden for statistics.
Our statistics for such things as the long term COV effects, and serious cases and deaths are not reliable. The unreliability implicit in the USA’s statistics is due to the fact we loaded people’s bodies up with such toxins as fentanyl, rocephin and remdesivir once the person was in the hospital.
Fentanyl makes a person loopy and controllable, so that way hospital personnel could get someone to agree to a Do Not Resuscitate order. That makes it much easier for a sick person to become a fatality.
Rocephin should never be prescribed for a individual fighting a respiratory infection.
Remdesivir destroys the kidneys, so the person bloats up with edema. Then unless the hospital staff understands this, the patient is diagnosed as having pneumonia. Then, since edema reducing meds like lasix are withheld, the antibiotics for pneumonia do not help and the result is another fatality to show on the death column of COVID, a strategy needed to keep the COV sham alive and well.
I think she understands fully. You just don’t see her perspective.
People are not machines, regardless of what Sotomayor says.
Let everyone decide for himself what risk he is willing to take. When the government forces the decision upon you — and then absolves itself from any harm that might come from that risk — you know you’re dealing with an immoral regime.
No, it doesn’t show that. The one doesn’t follow from the other.
Okay, Jerry, where did the 95% even come from?
For people under age 20, they have almost a zero possibility of getting COVID. (Or at least that was the case until the young person went out and got vaccinated, an activity that immediately lowered their natural immunity by 23 to 28%.)
How could a vaccine be 95% effective in a group whose members were under the age of 20 & whose statistical likelihood of getting COV is lower than their chance of getting hit by lightning & killed. (A risk young golfers on the pro tournament cycle take regularly when playing on golf courses in the Caribbean or in Hawaii)?
The fact these vaccine companies even tried to establish this as a benchmark is ridiculous.
Plus these days almost everyone, including Fauci himself, admits you’ve a rather good chance at getting COV after being jabbed. Although they add in what they see as a mitigating factor: “But you will not get a serious case or die.”
Well if I am 19 years old & end up getting COV after getting jabbed, I have upped my personal statistic on getting COV to 100%. (Reply # 14 has the chart on age related chances of surviving COV should any individual get it.)
This is nonsense. If you find this convincing, you don’t understand the math involved.
I’ll try to explain.
Imagine that you have a 1% risk (1-in-100) of being murdered in a given year. If you move to a safer neighborhood, that risk decreases to 0.05% (1-in-2000).
The relative risk reduction in this hypothetical is 95%. The absolute risk reduction is 0.95%.
You should move. Obviously.
Expressing the decrease in risk in terms of the absolute risk reduction is seriously misleading. Moving would reduce your risk by a factor of 20, not by a factor of less than 1%.
It seems that people who don’t understand math are easily misled. In the illustration above, the so-called “marketing lie” is the truth. The people doing the misleading are the ones who prepared that graphic.
Interestingly, the more that you argue, Drew, the more I’m inclined to change my mind and start supporting the vaccine mandate.
Your arguments are convincing, but in the opposite direction that you intend, at least for me.
However, I’m not going to change my mind. In this instance, I will continue to respect your freedom to ignore facts and take unnecessary and, in my view, unwarranted risks. However, I do not think that people who disagree are un-American.
Sure it does. The alleged purpose of vaccine mandates in workplaces is to prevent people from getting or spreading COVID. The vaccines don’t do that. Therefore the mandates have no purpose. Except control.
And that would make you my enemy. Again, I don’t say this lightly. But I do not wish to share a country with someone who is so cavalier about freedom and so willing to give it up to a tyrannical government.
Fear has done quite a number on the nation’s psyche. I don’t think you’d have felt this way 20 years ago. But you slowly boil the frog and he’ll never know.
Good God this is infuriating! People genuinely are innumerate. The graphic is comparing apples and oranges. The left hand %s are the Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) and the right hand %s are the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) and neither one is a lie. They are both true. They are different metrics calculated differently. The numerators are the same, the denominators are different.
How am I supposed to take this seriously when it is schlock?!?!?
One non sequitur deserves another, I guess.
What’s the purpose of the vaccine mandate if not to stop the spread of COVID?
Pretty broad range and not effective enough for unwarranted powers.