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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.
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I have been trying to ascertain how effective omicron is in arming us against other covid-19 variants and how long that protection might last. In the process of trying to answer that question, I came across this interesting page on the CDC’s website (please ignore the truly insulting “antibody quiz” at the end).
It has some interesting information about antibody production and vaccines and variants. I am not accepting their opinion as gospel, but it’s a pretty decent explanation of how vaccine efficacy is being calculated. The information is general enough that I don’t think it is politically motivated (that said, the CDC can turn any simple thing into a political problem).
Apparently, they aren’t using new-cases charts but rather the presence of protective antibodies in the vaccinated. It appears that they still don’t have a guaranteed level of antibodies needed to protect against an active infection, and I suspect there are lots of variables. But it’s easy to see why the efficacy remains so controversial.
The page also explains their rationale for recommending or mandating that people who have had active infections be vaccinated in addition. That advice was bothering me because the last time I looked into this, there were practically no recorded cases of reinfection. That has apparently changed according to this information sheet. They now say they are seeing reinfections at six months and later.
Since their research began on this vaccine, Moderna has been quite open about the difficulties they have been having ascertaining the optimal dose. Either during the clinical trials or when they first started administering the vaccine to the general public, they had to stop because the single dose was too strong. I never knew what that meant–what reactions they were seeing with the single dose that caused such concern. But that’s when they broke it into two doses. Then the timing of doses changed from three weeks to six weeks back to three weeks again. Later on, the booster they were allowed to give was, I believe, a half dose of the original vaccine, even though their own studies had shown that a full dose for a booster was most effective. Furthermore, originally they had said five months between doses. Then for some reason they went to six months (government budgets and pressure, perhaps), and now they are back to saying five months is all the protection lasts. As long as Moderna is open about their ongoing research, I’m fine with their changing course. In fact, I think that’s the way it should be.
I hope, when it is available in oral form, our country succeeds in making this an over-the-counter drug (over-the-counter partly because we are running out of doctors too). That would be fantastic.
I need to correct the bolded portion. Dr. Walensky said that on CNN in August of 2021!
I didn’t know about all these changes in the timing. I thought the general consensus was that longer intervals were better at providing long-term protection, but there is also the tradeoff of wanting short-term protection, too. (This has been true for a lot of vaccines.) I hadn’t heard anything about a recent shortening of any of the intervals. That’s a completely new one on me. Thanks for calling it to our attention.
I had a chance to look at it now. Presuming those quotes are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I think Fauci would quite possibly have been right at less than 100 efficacy against infection, given that we also had some “natural” immunity in the population. You don’t need 100 percent efficacy to bring R-naught down to less than 1.
That was a risky thing to say, though. Maybe it was an irresponsible thing to say if he didn’t state any caveats about unknowns due to new variants. That’s from a Yahoo news report, and news droids are not likely to report on caveats, so I’m not going to do the risky thing and claim that’s a complete report of what he said.
I’m not optimistic. The court is a bunch of cowards who rule very narrowly to not ruffle left wing feathers. The Colorado baker is still defending himself against lawsuits for his refusal to bake a cake. The idea that the supreme court is going to once and for all end our molestation from medical tyranny is hard to believe. They wouldn’t defend our elections, haven’t ended definitively one order from a mayor, governor or bureaucrat that makes 0 scientific sense. They haven’t put any of the burden of proof for 2 years on this covid cult. If the court is going to narrowly rule and not get to the end of any of these major issues they should get the hell out of the way for good on every issue and let us decide democratically. It would be better than this.
Here’s more CDC fun! But yeah, let’s go with the stats.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/01/09/cdc_director_walensky_estimates_40_of_hospitalizations_with_covid_are_not_because_of_covid.html
Garbage. If vaccinated people are just, or in some cases more likely, to be hospitalized with Covid, as those who are unvaccinated, there’s your data.
Also, aren’t vaccines supposed to prevent infection? You’re parroting the lines as they evolved. Remember how we were all told we’d “be safe” once we got the vaccine? Then the second jab? Then a booster?
Then later, we’ll be told to walk around with lobsters on our heads, because that’s the current guidance?
Enjoy your servitude.
I heard some of the oral (insert joke here). They’re clearly drawing conclusions based on bad info, ahead of the arguments; in fact the Wise Latina was making factual errors all over the transcript, and challenging the attorneys with that info.
Again, let me just say: Garbage. We have garbage for government.
FWIW, the official transcript has been updated to show Mr. Justice Gorsuch saying, “…hundreds, thousands of people…: The “of” was removed, because that’s not what he said.
Re the dead with comorbidities: yes, they increase the risk of death but how many would have left the hospital alive if they hadn’t caught the Wu flu?
The best discussion of these Supreme Court arguments is found at the Advisory Opinions website whose co-host is Sarah Isgur, whose husband argued against the mandates before SCOTUS. https://advisoryopinions.thedispatch.com/p/inside-a-supreme-court-argument
No. No this is not the best discussion. This is just another link to The Dispatch, which is run by Jonah Goldberg, a supporter of vaccine mandates.
Gosh Drew, I am a lawyer and I don’t believe that either you or Jonah is a lawyer. If anyone wants to hear about how a lawyer argued before the Supreme Court, I think that they would be well served by listening to the Law Professor, former Trump DOJ lawyer and Harvard Law Graduate Sarah Isgur talk about the Supreme Court Arguments made by her husband..
With all due respect, Drew, I think that you suffer from GDS (Goldberg Derangement Syndrome), or maybe DDS (Dispatch Derangement Syndrome).
Well, that’s a mark in my favor, anyway.
But, Drew, are you deranged when it comes to Johan or the Dispatch, my friend?