White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki concurred: “Public health decisions shouldn’t be made by the courts. They should be made by public health experts.”
But Mizelle did not make a public health decision; she made a legal decision, based on her understanding of the relevant statute. Contrary to Psaki’s implication, courts are not only authorized but obligated to make such decisions, as she surely would have conceded had Mizelle ruled in the CDC’s favor.
The Justice Department is appealing Mizelle’s ruling, but it did not seek a stay that would have restored the mask requirement while the case is pending. Although that omission may seem puzzling given the CDC’s claim that the mandate “remains necessary for the public health,” it makes sense if the administration’s goal is to facilitate future power grabs by keeping the agency’s statutory authority as vague as possible.
If there is “no place for the courts” to assess the legality of disease-control edicts, as Fauci maintains, it follows that the Supreme Court erred not only by blocking the CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium but even by taking up the issue. Evidently, it also should have stayed out of the dispute over the federal vaccination-or-testing requirement for private employees, which it likewise deemed illegal.
Fauci’s impatience with legal niceties has been apparent for some time. “The states are very often given a considerable amount of leeway in doing things the way they want to do it,” he complained in a 2020 interview with BBC Radio 4, “as opposed to in response to federal mandates, which are relatively rarely given.”
The result, Fauci explained, was “a considerable disparity, with states doing things differently in a nonconsistent way.” That “disparity,” he averred, “has been a major weakness in our response” to the pandemic.
The “leeway” that bothers Fauci is required by the Constitution, which leaves states with the primary responsibility for addressing public health threats under a broad “police power” that the federal government was never given. So his beef is not simply with the way COVID-19 policy happened to play out in the United States; it is an objection to our system of government.
Charles Oliver reports on just how authoritarian Covidians can be.
Vinay Prasad lists some things that the CDC does not know.
Dystopian Covidian authoritarianism stalks Britain. A slice:
Doctors who criticise vaccines or lockdown policies on social media could face being struck off if regulators rule they are guilty of spreading fake news, in an update to the “Hippocratic Oath”.
The core guidance for medics has been updated for the first time in almost a decade to cover media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Meanwhile in Shanghai… “China’s strict zero-Covid policy means many of the city’s residents are trapped at home – and left fearing infection, detainment or famine.”
The Covidocrats in charge of the WHO simply can’t let go of Covid derangement.
Jay Bhattacharya tweets a message to Meta:
Dear @meta censor,
You do not know more about masking efficacy than @carlheneghan and Prof. Tom Jefferson. Please permit the scientists to speak with each other and the public without your ignorant filters.
Encouraging you to emulate @elonmusk,
Jay B.
