Centers for Disease Passive Observation
Can we have public health regulations or no?
The Biden administration on Wednesday appealed a federal court ruling striking down the mask requirement for passengers on planes, trains, buses and other public transportation after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that the mandate was “necessary for the public health.”
That judge thinks bus drivers and flight attendants and the people who need to use buses and trains and planes should just take their chances, for the sake of our Divine Freedom. That judge who is very young and inexperienced and a Trump appointee.
While the C.D.C. wants to keep the mandate intact, it is also pressing the appeal to preserve its public health powers. But doing so is potentially risky. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which will hear the case, has a conservative bent, and the case could end up before the Supreme Court. If the ruling striking down the mandate is upheld, that decision could permanently weaken the agency’s authority.
How are we defining “conservative” here though? It seems like a very odd notion of conservatism to think people should be free to spread disease, or that rules are inherently bad things. It’s not so much conservative as bonkers-AynRandian, or Purely Selfish Libertarianism.
“This sets up a clash between public health and a conservative judiciary, and what’s riding on it is the future ability of our nation’s public health agencies to protect the American public,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University. “The risk is that you will get a conservative 11th Circuit ruling that will so curtail C.D.C.’s powers to fight Covid and future pandemics that it will make all Americans less safe and secure.”
There again, what’s “conservative” about that? Trumpian, yes, but conservative, no. This nonsense is tribalism rather than any recognizable right v left issue.
The C.D.C. actually has very limited regulatory authority; by and large, the power to impose public health restrictions lies with state and local governments. But legal experts agree that interstate transportation is a notable exception. In interviews, several said Judge Mizelle badly misread the law.
When it passed the Public Health Service Act of 1944, Congress authorized the C.D.C. to “make and enforce such regulations as in its judgment are necessity to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable disease.”
The law also suggests some steps the C.D.C. could take to prevent the spread of disease, including sanitation, disinfection and pest extermination.Judge Mizelle construed those suggestions as the C.D.C.’s only options — a narrow interpretation that “fundamentally misunderstands the scope of authority allowed to C.D.C.,” said James Hodge, the director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University. She also erred in likening the mask mandate to a quarantine, he said.
Oh ffs – really? That’s childish. Pretending a “for example” is a complete list is a rules-lawyering kid’s trick. “You said I couldn’t have any more cookies, you didn’t say cake!!”
The judge also faulted the C.D.C. for failing to solicit public comment on the mask order — a finding that Professor Gostin said “defies common sense.” While administrative law requires public comment for most federal actions, it also allows for exceptions for “good cause.”
No it’s fine. Next time the National Weather Service issues a hurricane warning they should solicit public comment before anyone takes it seriously. That’s always worked well in the past.
Sitting in MSP, waiting to board my flight home. Maybe a quarter to a third are wearing masks.
Ugh. Sympathies.
Unable to help myself, and at the risk of grossly offending the host and wider commentariat here, I have to ask…do you imagine the CDC should be given the power to enforce mask-wearing on all transport forever? Do you imagine granting them this power would magically end the risk of dying from COVID-19, or even significantly reduce it?
Firstly, cloth masks do next to nothing to prevent transmission, either from or to the wearer. Only an FFP-2 (N95 to those of you in North America) or better, worn over a well-shaved face with a tight seal, has any statistical effect on spreading the disease — and this only up to about an hour and a half in an enclosed space, after which the outside surface of the mask becomes saturated and contamination goes up dramatically. So masks fitted properly are good for a pop into the shop, but much less good for long rides in buses or on trains or planes — and if the masks being worn are made of cloth, or the people wearing them aren’t doing it properly, they are little better than talismans to ward off the evil spirits. (I almost certainly caught the ‘rona recently when a gentleman sat down across from me on the U-Bahn, yanked his mask down, and proceeded to loudly blow his nose. Some of the particles probably caught on my beard and migrated to my mouth or nose from there after I took my own mask off. I was triple-vaccinated, which probably accounts for why I experienced a very mild cold for my isolation, but I find the lingering cough a bit annoying.)
Secondly, COVID-19 is never, ever going away. That ship sailed in December 2019, when community spread became well-documented in Europe. It is now circulating freely among deer, dogs, cats, and all manner of domesticated and wild animals as well as among humans in every country in the world. No policy short of slaughtering every infected animal and radical social reengineering on a coordinated global scale will eliminate this virus.
The fantastic news is that the acute phase of the pandemic is effectively over for the vast majority of the population. We have vaccines which render infection from all known variants somewhere between a mild cold and a severe flu, we have revolutionary therapeutics which are at least as effective as vaccines when taken promptly, and unvaccinated children have a far better time than vaccinated adults — for them it is literally another cold virus, with difficult cases and deaths statistically identical to the other four coronaviruses in circulation. More vaccine types and therapeutics are coming rapidly down the pipe, and this fall, when cases and hospitalisations begin rising again and perhaps a new variant or two shows up, we will have had three years of collective experience in the appropriate countermeasures — which probably does not include another round of worldwide general lockdowns, as the evidence that this had a measurable impact upon the virus’s spread is quite weak.
No authority figure will ever say that you cannot wear a mask, or that you should not act conscientiously if you have symptoms or are or have close contacts in a high-risk group. But the risk of bodies piling up in streets from a deadly virus raging out of control is quite small now, and unlikely to be made significantly smaller by granting the CDC unlimited powers to socially engineer American society until the end of time. So by all means wear a well-fitting N95 mask when you feel sick or know you will be in a confined space, and definitely get vaccinated regularly (especially with different flavours of vaccine that activate different immune responses).
Otherwise, it is about time to get used to the calculated risk of COVID-19, as we have forever been used to the calculated risk of influenza.
No. What did I say that suggests I do?
Fortunately I was sitting next to a pregnant couple on my flight home who were masked, and didn’t remove their masks even for beverage service. (I felt a bit guilty when I removed mine to drink my water and eat my energy bar, but I did my best not to breathe on them.)
DD, the law clearly gives the CDC the power to enforce whatever measures it deems necessary to prevent disease transmission on public transportation. If the CDC decides that masks are no longer necessary, or if Congress passes a bill stripping that power from them, then fine. But it shouldn’t be up to one district court judge with no real experience in law (not to mention public health or even politics) to decide what the CDC can and can’t do.
Maroon
MSP?
Googling got me something about the British Columbia ‘Medical Services Plan’, which doesn’t sound like what you are talking about.
Please expand TLA ;-)
Airport, surely – Minneapolis?
Sorry. MSP—Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
So a pandemic can be ignored if the bodies remain indoors? That sounds awfully callous, especially to me, as I’m currently on day 12 of my second bout with covid in less than two months; the last one started two months ago today, and this one is going exactly the same way. I’m still having trouble breathing and need to wear my CPAP all day and night. I only had TWO DAYS of normal breathing between recovering from the last bout and going down with this one.
It seems I’m going to have to stay in isolation for the rest of my life if people won’t wear masks.
Ugh, I didn’t realize that about the two days, tigger. That’s horrible.
Thank you, Ophelia. To say it was disappointing would be something of an understatement. Still, I must stay a good little stoic, if only because crying makes it harder to breathe.