Tag Archives: #COVID19

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I wonder how many Philadelphia workers used this to get around the city’s #VaccineMandate ? What if others went on strike to support their laid-off brethren fighting the mandate?

As we have previously noted, with the vaccine mandates imposed by various governments, some enterprising nurses were selling faked COVID-19 vaccination cards while other people stole blank vaccination cards.

Philadelphia was one of the cities which mandated vaccinations for its employees, and continues to enforce them even though it has become clear that vaccination, while it seems to reduce symptoms, has virtually no effect on preventing people from either contracting the virus, or spreading it if they do contract it.

Philly has started placing unvaccinated city workers on leave. Here’s how the numbers break down.

More than 20% of the city’s Fire Department and 15% of the Police Department requested exemptions for religious or medical reasons.

by Anna Orso[1]One thing about Miss Orso’s article: at 992 words, it proves my point about newspapers, at least in their online articles, no longer need to be concerned with word or column inch restrictions! | Thursday, July 14, 2022

Philadelphia city officials placed about 270 workers on leave this month for failing to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, and more than 1 in 6 of the city’s public-safety employees requested to be exempt.

The employees placed on leave are a fraction of the city’s unionized workforce of more than 22,000. The majority are from two departments: the Prisons Department and the Fire Department, both of which are already short staffed amid a broader labor shortage, according to data provided by Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration. Continue reading →

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↑1 One thing about Miss Orso’s article: at 992 words, it proves my point about newspapers, at least in their online articles, no longer need to be concerned with word or column inch restrictions!
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Will the next set of #COVID19 restrictions come on November 9th?

As we noted on Saturday, the Editorial Board of The Washington Post do not think that we have been scared of COVID-19 enough. That was an editorial; here comes what passes for a straight news story:

As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

By Joel Achenbach | Sunday, July 10, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

America has decided the pandemic is over. The coronavirus has other ideas.

The latest omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country.

The Post illustrated the article with a photo captioned, “Commuters board the subway in New York, which still requires masks on trains and indoor stations.” There were very few people in the photo visibly wearing masks.

The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average. But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends.

They know that it “wildly underestimates” the true number? How do they know this?

Many of the at-home COVID tests use your cell phone to read the test data, though apparently not all of them do. I’m waiting for the government to mandate that tests using a smartphone require the phone to send the test results to the government, and to pull from the market at-home tests which do not require a smartphone.

Is that paranoid? Perhaps a little, but the left have shown no concern at all for people’s privacy when it comes to the virus, and a fascistic bent toward requiring people to get vaccinated and wear masks.

I admit it: when I see the name “Topol,” I think of Reb Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Orthodox Jewish men traditionally use the honorific Reb to honor their ancestors. Click to enlarge.

Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”

“The worst version of the virus that we’ve seen”? Well, that’s what the headline on last Thursday’s Post editorial called it, but somehow, someway, this “worst version” has yet to result in significantly more hospitalizations.

Other experts point out that, despite being hit by multiple rounds of ever-more-contagious omicron subvariants, the country has not yet seen a dramatic spike in hospitalizations. About 38,000 people were hospitalized nationally with covid as of Friday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That figure has been steadily rising since early March, but remains far below the record 162,000 patients hospitalized with covid in mid-January. The average daily death toll on Friday stood at 329 and has not changed significantly over the past two months.

Let’s do the math: 38,000 ÷ 162,000 = 0.2345679012345679, or 23.46%, slightly less than ¼ of the number of the less contagious BA.1 Omicron variant that was primarily seen last January.

Restrictions and mandates are long gone. Air travel is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Political leaders aren’t talking about the virus — it’s virtually a nonissue on the campaign trail. Most people are done with masking, social distancing and the pandemic generally. They’re taking their chances with the virus.

Well, of course. Both Republican and Democratic candidates know that the public are fed up with the restrictions, and have been for a long time now. With the restrictions gone, Republicans have no issue against which to campaign, and the last thing that the Democrats want is to have the voters thinking that they’ll try to reimpose them. I linked that photo of New Yorkers boarding the train; despite the stated restrictions, even liberal New Yorkers aren’t obeying them.

So, what are the credentialed media trying to do here? They know as well as the politicians that the public will simply not obey a reimposition of restrictions, but the media aren’t running for election; they simply have to make certain that their stories don’t negatively affect Democratic candidates in an election that’s just four months away.

But they are setting it up, just in case BA.5 does turn out to be as bad as Dr Topol might have you believe, because if the urban Democrats — it won’t be Republicans, anywhere — try to reimpose restrictions, they’ll have some cover from a media which will say, “See, we told you so!”

Perhaps the next set of restrictions will come on November 9th?

This article was from The Washington Post, but The Philadelphia Inquirer published it as well, and we’ve seen how Philly’s city government, wholly dominated by liberal Democrats, has been very willing to put restrictions on people, though they had to drop the last mandate due to politics.

I don’t expect the Democrats trying to reimpose mandates soon, because the election is approaching, but I will never underestimate their desire to control your life.

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The Washington Post tells us that we are not fearful enough

As the propaganda-generated fear in America about COVID-19 has dramatically waned, the Editorial Board of The Washington Post want to ramp it up again:

The worst virus variant just arrived. The pandemic is not over.

by the Editorial Board | Thursday, July 7, 2022 | 1:58 PM EDT

The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen.

What’s BA.5? This is the latest subvariant of omicron, which stormed the planet late last year and caused a huge wave of infection. As of now, BA.5 and a closely related variant, BA.4, account for about 70 percent of all infections in the United States, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in part on modeling. These two newcomers are easing out an earlier variant, BA.2.

The obscure names should not hide the punch of BA.5. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, says that BA.5 “is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.” He adds, “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of omicron. There has not been a marked increase in hospitalizations and deaths, he reports, because there is so much immunity built up from the winter omicron wave. But there are aspects of this new variant very much worth keeping an eye on as the United States remains stuck at an uncomfortably high plateau of pandemic misery. And the new variants are driving a case surge in Europe.

At the core of the BA.5 difference is its biology. Evolution has given it more fitness, a term that incorporates its ability to transmit, grow and evade immunity; the variant shows “marked difference from all prior variants,” reports Dr. Topol. One way it does so is by evading the body’s immune system, and BA.4 and BA.5 together are “the most immune-evasive variants” seen in multiple studies to date.

As we have previously noted, this past winter, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” This was during the BA.1 variant’s primacy, and two months later, the American Medical Association warned that the then-new BA.2 subvariant could be “30% to 60% more transmissible” than BA.1. While playing Blondie’s One Way of Another, we noted that BA.4 and BA.5 are gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya! Yale Medicine also said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible.

But here comes the money line from the Editorial Board, five paragraphs down:

Whether BA.5 will lead to more severe disease isn’t clear yet. But knowing that the virus is spreading should reinforce the need for the familiar mitigation measures: high-quality face masks, better air filtration and ventilation, and avoiding exposure in crowded indoor spaces.

Translation: while no one yet knows if BA.4 and BA.5 will actually cause more serious symptoms, Our Betters want us to return to the fears of 2020. Yet, despite not knowing, the editorial headline declares it to be “the worst virus variant.”

Yale Medicine already stated:

The second question has been whether Omicron—and currently the BA.4 and BA.5 variants—is more likely than Delta or other variants to cause severe disease. While there is more to learn about BA.5, early data from South Africa has not shown a sharp rise in deaths from the subvariant. The original Omicron caused a record number of cases, but while it has also caused its share of hospitalizations and deaths, factors such as lengths of hospital stays, ICU admittance, and death have been “lower than during previous pandemic peaks,” according to a CDC report in January.

The CDC says the presence of severity of symptoms can be affected by vaccination, history of prior infection, and age and other health conditions.

Click to enlarge.

As the WaPo wants us to return to “high-quality face masks,” I will note here that for many, perhaps most, American men, including me, an N-95 face mask cannot be worn properly: a third of all American men always wear a beard, while another 27% say that they sometimes do.

It would seem that the Editorial Board want to control our facial hair as well. After all, it’s only us evil reich-wing conservatives who wear beards, right?

OK, OK, so I’m projecting here, but one thing is clear: the Editorial Board want more subservience to control — from the government? — by the population in general. As Glenn Greenwald said:

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

Mr Greenwald, certainly no conservative, was writing about the desire of governments for more security control, not the virus, but the same statement applies. And the Editorial Board, worried to death as they are that, Heaven forfend! the evil Republicans will win significant majorities in the November elections, want us all to be more subservient to the federal government.

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One way or another, I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya

You can never escape!

One way or another, I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way, or another, I’m gonna win ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way, or another, I’m gonna see ya
I’m gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya
One day, maybe next week
I’m gonna meet ya, I’m gonna meet ya, I’ll meet ya

. — Blondie and coronavirus

It seems that the plebeians have become too complacent about COVID-19, and need to be frightened again! From CNN:

New coronavirus subvariants escape antibodies from vaccination and prior Omicron infection, studies suggest

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN | Updated 5:20 AM EDT, Thursday June 23, 2022

Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to new data from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of Harvard Medical School.

However, Covid-19 vaccination is still expected to provide substantial protection against severe disease, and vaccine makers are working on updated shots that might elicit a stronger immune response against the variants.

The levels of neutralizing antibodies that a previous infection or vaccinations elicit are several times lower against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants compared with the original coronavirus, according to the new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

“We observed 3-fold reductions of neutralizing antibody titers induced by vaccination and infection against BA4 and BA5 compared with BA1 and BA2, which are already substantially lower than the original COVID-19 variants,” Dr. Dan Barouch, an author of the paper and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wrote in an email to CNN.

“Our data suggest that these new Omicron subvariants will likely be able to lead to surges of infections in populations with high levels of vaccine immunity as well as natural BA1 and BA2 immunity,” Barouch wrote. “However, it is likely that vaccine immunity will still provide substantial protection against severe disease with BA4 and BA5.”

Note what is being said here: we are being told that the vaccines will protect people better from getting sick from the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but implies, though it does not directly state, that immunity from the vaccine will protect you where “natural BA.1 and BA.2 immunity,” from having contracted and recovered from the virus will not.

They recently found that the BA.4 and BA.5 viruses were more likely to escape antibodies from the blood of fully vaccinated and boosted adults compared with other Omicron subvariants, raising the risk of vaccine-breakthrough Covid-19 infections.

The authors of that separate study say their results point to a higher risk for reinfection, even in people who have some prior immunity against the virus. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 94.7% of the US population ages 16 and older have antibodies against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 through vaccination, infection, or both.

Simply put, the vaccines will not prevent you from contracting the virus, but will, at best, keep you from getting as sick from it. We might as well face it: masks don’t help anything, and we’re all going to contract the virus at some point. In all probability you have already contracted it at some point, but may not know that you had it.

BA.4 and BA.5 caused an estimated 35% of new Covid-19 infections in the United States last week, up from 29% the week before, according to data shared by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.

BA.4 and BA.5 are the fastest spreading variants reported to date, and they are expected to dominate Covid-19 transmission in the United States, United Kingdom and the rest of Europe within the next few weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

I am certainly no anti-vaxxer, and have been vaccinated, and twice boostered myself. But these were my free choices, and I believe that everyone should have the right to choose freely whether or not to take the vaccines.

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Ihre Papiere, bitte!

As we have previously noted, with the HITECH Act pushing making medical records electronic and transferable — with appropriate precautions, of course! — we already have records in place which the government could search to see who has admitted to having firearms at home. If you think that the government is not interested in your medical records, and would never actually check them, think again. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A digital COVID vaccination record is coming in Philly, but is there a need?

A digital vaccination card is coming to Philly, but not many places are asking for the record any more.

by Kasturi Pananjady and Jason Laughlin | Friday, May 27, 2022 | 9:09 AM EDT

Philadelphia is pushing ahead with an effort to issue digital vaccine cards to residents, though businesses and health experts say they may be irrelevant at this stage in the pandemic.

The digital record encrypts the same vaccination information found on paper cards in a QR code format that can be scanned by businesses and others seeking to confirm vaccine status.

“There is a value, but its uptake would be very limited,” said Tinglong Dai, professor of operations management and business analytics at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. “People don’t really use vaccination records much unless you travel outside the United States.”

The city is moving ahead with the system despite ending its vaccine mandate for indoor dining in February. It has no plans to renew any COVID-19 safety restrictions. It declined to say when the digital cards will be available, citing technical issues with the rollout.

Proof of vaccination, though, is useful for more than just access to indoor dining, said Matt Rankin, a spokesperson for the health department. Some businesses do still require customers prove vaccination, as do many employers and schools, Rankin said. The digital proof of vaccination would also be helpful as people get booster shots.

There’s more at the original, and I can’t just quote it all; that’s plagiarism and a copyright violation, but the article noted several points:

  • Philadelphia had planned an online portal for vaccination records even before the panicdemic.
  • People seeking their vaccination records must use a two-factor identification process, including a digital log-in which would send an e-mail or text message for authentication. If the system did not have an e-mail or cell phone number on file, the system wouldn’t work for that individual, so the city askedg vaccine providers to maintain up to date contact information in January.
  • Public health services been seeking a national vaccination database that physicians could access, but such nas not yet been created.

Some of the systems which would be used to scan the QR code in a digital vaccination record do not retain the information, but that does not mean that all of them do. You could ask the doorman who scans your code, but he might not actually know, nor do you have any way to verify that he’s telling the truth when he does answer.

It is, of course, for our own good, right? After all, COVID-19 was a serious public health emergency, right? So, naturally, those not vaccinated simply needed to be excluded from all of public life, right?

So, if “gun violence” is a “public health emergency,” the way the left keep telling us, then the same justifications used to infringe on our constitutional rights during the panicdemic will be available against people who own firearms, won’t they? Except, of course, that would only apply to law-abiding people whom the government know have firearms, not the thugs carrying them illegally.

Expect calls for a national firearms registry!

Political interest in a national record-keeping system sparked by the pandemic has recently waned. That’s in part because vaccinated people are still able to transmit the virus, making vaccination less critical as a tool to prevent COVID’s spread.

It’s something of a surprise that the Inquirer admitted what we already knew, that the various vaccinations, while they seem to mitigate the virulence of the disease, don’t appear to do much in preventing people from either contracting or spreading the virus. In January, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” Remember: this was during the first Xi Omicron variant, before there was any real spread of the BA.2 Xi Omicron variant, which is, supposedly, even more infectious.

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The Wuhan Flu and the Biden Administration theater

We were discussing COVID at the Pico hacienda yesterday. My older daughter just spent time in isolation at Ft Bliss, having tested positive for the Wuhan Flu as she’s getting ready to deploy to Kuwait. She has been vaccinated and boosted. My wife, vaccinated and twice boosted, my younger daughter, vaccinated and boosted, and I, vaccinated and boosted, guessed that we had probably had it, and had certainly been exposed, but never tested, because we were never sick. SSG Pico said that it felt like allergies to her, and my wife, untested, has had a few allergy symptoms, but the pollen has been very high in the Bluegrass State. Mrs Pico’s sister, who is vaccinated and double boosted, did feel sick, and thinks she had it, but was never tested. She did feel ill fewer than 14 days after her second booster shot, so there’s that. If I had it, I was asymptomatic.

We noted in the discussion that, with at-home testing, fewer people are going to get tested, and if someone did test positive at home, he was not necessarily going to report it to anyone, so the positive test numbers are essentially useless.

In January, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” Remember: this was during the first Xi Omicron variant, before there was any real spread of the BA.2 Xi Omicron variant, which is, supposedly, even more infectious.

But note: even with the BA.2 Xi Omicron variant spreading, hospitalizations and deaths are still low, even if they have ticked up slightly, yet the CDC reported that, as of April 12, only 62% of our total population are ‘fully vaccinated.’ While vaccinations are supposed to greatly reduce WuFlu symptoms for those who contract it, one has to ask: why aren’t the 38% who are not vaccinated dropping like flies?

My guess — and it is a guess — is that many of the unvaccinated were previously exposed, and developed their own immunity. In a situation where Dr Fauxi told us that everyone was going to contract the virus, that’s the only reasonable explanation.

We have been told that Xi Omicron variant, while more easily transmitted, didn’t make people as sick. That raises the obvious question: did the virus itself mutate into something less virulent, or does it seem less virulent because most people already have some resistance to it?

Now, as William Teach has reported, the White House is once again pushing, though not trying to mandate, indoor masking, and the Philadelphia School District is once again requiring face masks, even though children appear to be the least vulnerable to the virus, even though many are not vaccinated.

Mr Teach included a Tweet from Ian Miller showing Joe Biden coming down the stairs from Air Force One in South Korea, dutifully wearing a mask, but taking it off as soon as he got to the bottom of the stairs and was greeted by Republic of Korea officials. It shows a Secret Service man in the doorway of the aircraft, masked up, but let’s face it: everyone in the President’s entourage is tested, tested frequently, and if anyone had the WuFlu, he’d never have been on the plane in the first place.

It was all for show: the President left the very controlled environment of Air Force One, masked, and then, as he was interacting with people in an environment over which he had no control — though he probably had assurances — the mask came off. It was the theater of the absurd.

At this point, masks are useless. They haven’t stopped the transmission of the virus, seemingly neither stopping the transmission from an infected person nor prevented an uninfected person from contracting it. The WuFlu is going to be with us, period, probably forever. It’s not that we need to learn to live with it; we’ve already done that! It’s time to just admit it.

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Our Freedom of Religion vindicated!

St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, where I attend Mass

We were critical, from the very beginning, of the authoritarian dictates of so many of our nation’s governors when the COVID-19 scare first erupted.

On March 19, 2020 Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) unconstitutionally ordered all churches closed in the Bluegrass State. That order covered the Easter holiday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. When a couple of churches ignored the Governor’s order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday!

Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

Then, on July 24, 2020, he asked church leaders to suspend services for two Sundays, which most declined to do, and again on November 19th made another request that churches close, for “three or four weeks,” a request that would have taken them through Thanksgiving. Fortunately, that request was denied as well.

Now comes yet another court ruling, telling us that the Constitution means what it says, and that state Governors cannot restrict our freedom of religion: Continue reading →

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Much of the public are just plain fed up with masking!

We have previously noted Ana Cabera Neilson’s tweet, in which she said:

Just boarded a flight to Atlanta. I think I’ll stick with my mask a little longer. (I’d say it’s about 50-50 on this flight. Everyone treating each other respectfully)

That’s the way things should be: take your own decisions on what you wish to do, and respect other people’s choices on how they wish to behave.

Of course, the Usual Suspects are appalled. New York Times OpEd columnist Paul Krugman tweeted:

A prediction about masking: Soon we’ll be seeing many incidents in which those who choose to protect themselves with KN95s etc face harassment, even violence. Because this was never about freedom.

The distinguished Dr Krugman tends to go extreme when it comes to his dislike of conservatives, so this is no surprise, but I’d be surprised if there are more than a few isolated incidents of such. Virginia Kruta had the best response:

More likely: if we even notice that someone else has chosen to wear a mask, the worst they’ll get from us as we go about our business is an eye-roll.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain: The Weird Logic of COVID-19 Panic

Alas! To the snowflake left, even an eyeroll might be called harassment, a ‘micro-aggression,’ and even a threat of violence. My darling bride, of 42 years, 11 months, and two days, has accused me of rolling my eyes in the past. 🙂

Joy Ann Reid of MSNBC let slip her real reasoning, saying, “did announcing the end of the mask mandate literally in the middle of the flight kind of let those a-holes win?”

That’s pretty much all it has ever been: the ‘progressives’ wanting to keep restrictions for as long as possible, because they didn’t want to let conservatives win.

In the City of Brotherly Love, where the voters gave Joe Biden a whopping 81.44% of their votes, there are plenty of signs that that very Democratic city is just as fed up with mask mandates as anyplace else. The authoritarian dictators there reinstated an indoor mask mandate, beginning on Monday, April 18th. Indoor spaces can go mask-free if the space owners verify that everyone entering has been vaccinated; if this step is not taken, then everyone, vaccinated or otherwise, must wear a mask.

But SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, is not under the city’s authority, and SEPTA’s executives decided to drop masking requirements in its stations and conveyances:

Here’s how SEPTA decided to lift its mask requirement after a federal judge canceled the national mandate

The Justice Department said Tuesday that it may appeal the ruling, but only if the CDC wants to extend the mask requirement.

by Thomas Fitzgerald and Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, April 19, 2022

On Monday afternoon, SEPTA officials rushed to digest and respond to a federal judge’s order obliterating the national mask requirement for passengers on public transportation.

At first, the agency said it would “for now” continue to require masks in its stations and on its commuter trains, subways, buses, and trolleys.

But after 9 p.m., SEPTA announced riders could feel free to slip off their masks if they wished.

It joined NJ Transit and other peer transit systems in Washington, Boston, and Atlanta, as well as Amtrak, the national passenger railroad, in dropping mask mandates. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle kept their requirements in force.

And Tuesday evening, the Biden administration said it will appeal the judge’s ruling if the CDC wants to extend its masking directive, which was due to expire May 3.

If filed, an appeal could complicate SEPTA’s decision if either the judge herself or the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issues a stay of Monday’s order voiding the federal mask rule.

There is a legal point here. A District Court Judge’s ruling does not set a legal precedent, but if the Court of Appeals rules on the question, that does set a precedent . . . and judges appointed by President Donald Trump comprise the majority on the 11th Circuit. The Biden Administration might choose to let the decision stand rater than risk a precedent-setting decision that goes against them, in case there is another COVID surge later in the year.

The money line was further down:

In the end, SEPTA’s executive team and board members decided it made little sense to keep in place the terms of a federal mandate that no longer existed, officials said. And above all, there was a concern for employees, who had already been subject to abuse and harassment while asking riders to mask up during the pandemic.

“We didn’t want our frontline workers, who’ve been heroic, to be in a challenging spot,” said CEO Leslie S. Richards. “Our customers certainly know about the court decision, and they know we can’t really enforce it.”

That’s right: the public know! And the city was leaving enforcement of the reinstated mask mandate up to cute coeds working as restaurant hostesses and bodega owners more worried about armed robbers to enforce the mask mandate.

What needs to be stressed now, to those who have objected to the mask mandates on the basis of freedom and individual rights is that other people also have individual rights, and those who wish to continue to wear masks have every right to do so. We should respect them, in ways they did not respect us.

The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice has appealed the judge’s ruling. I guess that we’ll see what happens.

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The proper response to the end of the airliner mask mandate: you do you! Do as you please, and respect the choices of others who do as they wish

The tweet shown at the right is actually a screen capture rather than an embedding of the original, just in case her superiors ordered Ana Cabrera Neilson to take it down.

Just boarded a flight to Atlanta. I think I’ll stick with my mask a little longer. (I’d say it’s about 50-50 on this flight. Everyone treating each other respectfully)

Mrs Neilson’s Twitter biography lists her as “@CNN Anchor and Correspondent, Mom, Wife, Runner, Traveler, Gardener, Dog lover, Skier, Huge Denver Broncos Fan, Proud @MurrowCollege alumna, RT ≠ endorsements.” I suppose that I will have to forgive her for being a Broncos fan; no Oakland — never Las Vegas! — Raiders fan can ever truly like someone who likes the Denver Broncos.

What Mrs Neilson wrote is the way things ought to be! She does her thing, other people do theirs, and they leave each other alone.

Of course, for the Karens among us, we had one styling himself fandelos responding:

Actually, if it’s 50/50 masks, then no, not “everyone is treating each other respectfully”. Waved mandate aside, those without masks are showing zero respect for higher risk individuals who are undoubtedly on their flight.

I get it: those Americans who have been thoroughly imbued with fear by the government are still filled with it. But the facts are pretty obvious: Americans are mostly done with masking and fear. Jamie Apody, a sports reporter for WPVI-TV, Channel 6 in Philadelphia, tweeted that she didn’t see many people at the Toronto Raptors vs Philadelphia 76ers first round NBA playoff game taking the city’s indoor mask mandate seriously, including what a 16 second video of a mostly mask-free crowd.

My good friend William Teach reported that the Biden Administration are considering an appeal of District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s order. Personally, knowing that the decision was before a brilliant and highly-qualified judge, who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, I am surprised that the Justice Department didn’t have an emergency appeal and request to stay the judge’s order ready to go the moment the judge’s decision was handed down. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t be: the Biden Administration are full of people with their ears to the political ground, and they know that Americans are simply tired of the panicdemic restrictions. Already fearing huge losses in the 2022 elections, the last thing they want to do is piss off more voters. If this is not appealed, the mask mandate is gone, and the Administration can, and will, blame a federal judge appointed by President Trump for it if cases increase.

Though he was addressing another issue, Glenn Greenwald noted that fear was crucial for state authority, and fear is what governments, at all levels, have been using to control the public. But most Americans have gotten well over their fear of COVID-19, and that means most Americans are no longer susceptible to government fear-borne mandates. To alter a common phrase, Americans have voted with their bare faces against the mandates.