All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (2 Viewers)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[SamAndreas]

Good ruling, despite one of the liberal judges stating disinformation during the hearing.
100,000 children in hospitals BECAUSE of covid and many on ventilators. LOL. Do the justices get fact checked? The real number is around 3,500 I think.

lets do a fact check. The US population is 329.5 million, that divided by 100,000 = 0.003295 million.

That times 10.2 kids who are between 0 and 4 years old who were hospitalized on Christmas week, the last week in December.
That number is 0.033609 million. Which is 33,609 kids under the age of 4 years old in the hospital during just one week.

Using the same data set the accumulative hospitalizations for 0 to 4 years old kids for the whole pandemic are 127 / 100,000. Which are 418,465 kids under the age of 4 years old in the hospital during the pandemic.

The accumulative for just the one month of December and the first week of January, that period just before that US Supreme court hearing is (127-101) / 100,000. That is 85,670 kids under the age of 4 years old in the hospital during a time period which would make sense for that judge to have been talking about.

If that judge had been thinking of kids 0 to 5 in stead of 0 to 4 that would have come to 100,000 hospitalized during that 5 week period just before that hearing. And we're not even getting to 6 years old kids.

So I rule in this fact check that the judge told the truth about the kids. The court ruled for the kids in hospitals in that second case. They did the right thing, in that case.

The other ruling the one they got wrong will enhance the Democratic party turnout in 2022, because it irritates us.

Here's where I got the CDC rate data for 0 to 4 year old kids from:

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

 

[Farb]

lets do a fact check. The US population is 329.5 million, that divided by 100,000 = 0.003295 million.

That times 10.2 kids who are between 0 and 4 years old who were hospitalized on Christmas week, the last week in December.
That number is 0.033609 million. Which is 33,609 kids under the age of 4 years old in the hospital during just one week.

Using the same data set the accumulative hospitalizations for 0 to 4 years old kids for the whole pandemic are 127 / 100,000. Which are 418,465 kids under the age of 4 years old in the hospital during the pandemic.

The accumulative for just the one month of December and the first week of January, that period just before that US Supreme court hearing is (127-101) / 100,000. That is 85,670 kids under the age of 4 years old in the hospital during a time period which would make sense for that judge to have been talking about.

If that judge had been thinking of kids 0 to 5 in stead of 0 to 4 that would have come to 100,000 hospitalized during that 5 week period just before that hearing. And we're not even getting to 6 years old kids.

So I rule in this fact check that the judge told the truth about the kids. The court ruled for the kids in hospitals in that second case. They did the right thing, in that case.

The other ruling the one they got wrong will enhance the Democratic party turnout in 2022, because it irritates us.

Here's where I got the CDC rate data for 0 to 4 year old kids from:

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

Is it though?

That is a lot of mental gymnastics to come to the defense of a SCOTUS judge.

Turns out they do fact check a

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/polit...tomayor-on-kids-with-severe-covid-19/2659391/

• The number of coronavirus-positive pediatric hospitalizations has risen with the spread of the omicron variant. However, Sotomayor’s number was way off.
• At the time she made this comment, federal data showed that fewer than 5,000 coronavirus-positive children were in the hospital. In fact, fewer than 83,000 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19 — cumulatively — since August 2020.
• There are over 100,000 cases among children, but scientists say that few of those are severe.

Wallensky of the CDC also corrected the judges hyperbole as well

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...Justice-Sotomayors-obscenely-false-claim.html

• 'We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators,' Sotomayor said on Friday
• Walensky contradicted Sotomayor's claims during a Fox News Sunday segment
• 'The number is not 100,000 It's roughly 3500 in hospitals now?' asked Bret Baier
• 'Yes. In fact...they're still about 15 fold less than hospitalizations of our older age or age demographic,' Walinsky answered, adding they were vastly unvaccinated
• As of January 8, the number of hospitalization in children in the US is roughly 5,000, while the CDC has reported 84,000 cumulative since August, 2020

 

[zztop]

They affirmed the important rule at least. The other one would have been a pyrrhic victory at best. In the long haul it probably won't matter because in being there for a while it more than likely moved all the business that could be moved to impose their own mandates.

This way the nonconformist businesses will do as they were going to do anyway, and I think this will transfer blame to Republicans such that Democrats stand a better change of keeping control over the House and Senate after the mid term election.

I guess, maybe, who knows. I'm not sure how you can stay so optimistic about things

 

[MT15]

she misread cases for hospitalizations. Was probably just an error and not a deliberate lie.

 

[SamAndreas]

Is it though?

That is a lot of mental gymnastics to come to the defense of a SCOTUS judge.

Turns out they do fact check a

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/polit...tomayor-on-kids-with-severe-covid-19/2659391/

• The number of coronavirus-positive pediatric hospitalizations has risen with the spread of the omicron variant. However, Sotomayor’s number was way off.
• At the time she made this comment, federal data showed that fewer than 5,000 coronavirus-positive children were in the hospital. In fact, fewer than 83,000 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19 — cumulatively — since August 2020.
• There are over 100,000 cases among children, but scientists say that few of those are severe.

Wallensky of the CDC also corrected the judges hyperbole as well

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...Justice-Sotomayors-obscenely-false-claim.html

• 'We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators,' Sotomayor said on Friday
• Walensky contradicted Sotomayor's claims during a Fox News Sunday segment
• 'The number is not 100,000 It's roughly 3500 in hospitals now?' asked Bret Baier
• 'Yes. In fact...they're still about 15 fold less than hospitalizations of our older age or age demographic,' Walinsky answered, adding they were vastly unvaccinated
• As of January 8, the number of hospitalization in children in the US is roughly 5,000, while the CDC has reported 84,000 cumulative since August, 2020

What you call mental gymnastics I call math, and the thing is I used Federal data and I showed my math. And linked to my data.

The funny thing about that first fact check is they came up with that same 83,000 number but they attributed it to the 5 to 17 year age group. And then they cheery picked through the data apparently having come up with their own definition about who counts insofar as serious enough, blaw, blaw, blaw!

I didn't look very log at that Daily Mail blurbage, clearly they don't even come close.

 

[SamAndreas]

I guess, maybe, who knows. I'm not sure how you can stay so optimistic about things

Well, I get enough sleep, I drink plenty of liquids, and I eat at least three portions of fruit and fiber.

 

[Farb]

she misread cases for hospitalizations. Was probably just an error and not a deliberate lie.

You have proof of this? Without it, it was just as likely a lie. What about the ventilator part?
Either a justice was incorrect on facts on a case in front of her or she lied. Either way it is not a good look for the SCOTUS.

 

[Farb]

What you call mental gymnastics I call math, and the thing is I used Federal data and I showed my math. And linked to my data.

The funny thing about that first fact check is they came up with that same 83,000 number but they attributed it to the 5 to 17 year age group. And then they cheery picked through the data apparently having come up with their own definition about who counts insofar as serious enough, blaw, blaw, blaw!

I didn't look very log at that Daily Mail blurbage, clearly they don't even come close.

That Daily Mail article quotes the CDC director. So she was not even close and totally incorrect?

 

[SamAndreas]

That Daily Mail article quotes the CDC director. So she was not even close and totally incorrect?

I quoted CDC hospitalization data for 0 to 4 years old kids.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

 

[Optimus Prime]

Article on SCOTUS decision on 100+ employee mandate
=====================================

The Supreme Court significantly hobbled—but did not obliterate—President Joe Biden’s efforts to protect Americans from COVID in the face of congressional inaction. By a 6–3 vote, the justices blocked his vaccinate-or-test mandate for large employers, accusing the administration of exceeding its authority. But by a 5–4 vote, the court upheld the administration’s vaccine mandate for health care workers, a decision that will compel more than 10 million people to get the jab.

This split double header is a crushing defeat for Biden’s efforts to curb the pandemic by protecting American workers from catching COVID in the workplace. SCOTUS’ decision is not, however, a knockout blow to the administrative state. The Republican-appointed justices may yet enfeeble the executive branch’s ability to implement federal law. But a majority of them declined to seize on these cases as their vehicle.

By far the more important case, NFIB v. Department of Labor involves an “emergency temporary standard” issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This rule required employers with 100 or more workers to give their staff a choice: either get the COVID-19 vaccine or test weekly and mask in the office. The policy would have covered roughly 84 million people. To justify this mandate, OSHA drew on a federal law that allows the agency to protect employees from a “grave danger” resulting from “physically harmful” “agents” or “new hazards.” A coalition of red states filed a lawsuit to halt OSHA’s mandate, and by a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court took their side.

SCOTUS’ unsigned majority opinion rests on several dubious claims. The court declared that “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” So even though COVID is undoubtedly a “grave danger” and a “new hazard” to workers, this broad language is not enough, because it does not “plainly authorize” the mandate. Why not? The majority invented a distinction between hazards that occur solely in the workplace and hazards that occur in and out of the workplace.

Because the pandemic exists outside the workplace, it is not the kind of “grave danger” envisioned by the statute, and “falls outside OSHA’s sphere of expertise.” The majority also raised the “anti-novelty principle,” stating: “It is telling that OSHA, in its half century of existence, has never before adopted a broad public health regulation of this kind.”

Notice something unusual about this analysis? The dissenters certainly did: It is utterly untethered to the plain text of the law, which obviously encompasses OSHA’s rule. In a rare joint dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan shredded this anti-textual approach to statutory interpretation. By dismantling OSHA’s authority over hazards found in and out of the workplace, they wrote, the majority imposed “a limit found no place in the governing statute.”

This limit is not even supported by history: The agency has long regulated risks “beyond the workplace walls,” including fires, excessive noise, unsafe drinking water, and faulty electrical installations. And if the vaccinate-or-test policy is unprecedented, that is because it is in response to an unprecedented event: the deadliest pandemic in American history..................

MSN

 

[Farb]

Make congress do what we pay them to do. Stop trying to rule by decree (both parties).

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Farb-o is surprisingly right on this one. And Biden needs to give up on these mandates. The vaccine is available. If people don't want to take it, fine. If they get seriously ill with COVID then I hope they have good insurance. From a fiscal standpoint I am fine with the government underwriting the relatively inexpensive cost of vaccine but not for the more expensive treatments. Let those people pay for it out of their own pockets like true capitalists.

There is a rational basis for the government wanting to fund the more inexpensive option that acts as a preventative which dovetails nicely with an irrational anti-vaxxer willing to take the more expensive treatments that are developed by the exact same pharmaceutical companies.

 

[MT15]

Make congress do what we pay them to do. Stop trying to rule by decree (both parties).

If only you would take that attitude to heart about everything else.

 

[MT15]

You have proof of this? Without it, it was just as likely a lie. What about the ventilator part?
Either a justice was incorrect on facts on a case in front of her or she lied. Either way it is not a good look for the SCOTUS.

You sure give your own sources a whole lot of leeway, yet she MUST BE LYING rather than mistaken. Okay, you do you.

 

[Farb]

You sure give your own sources a whole lot of leeway, yet she MUST BE LYING rather than mistaken. Okay, you do you.

If by my sources, you mean her mouth that had her words coming out of them, then like I pointed out, the esteemed CDC also corrected her incorrect words.

 

[Farb]

Farb-o is surprisingly right on this one. And Biden needs to give up on these mandates. The vaccine is available. If people don't want to take it, fine. If they get seriously ill with COVID then I hope they have good insurance. From a fiscal standpoint I am fine with the government underwriting the relatively inexpensive cost of vaccine but not for the more expensive treatments. Let those people pay for it out of their own pockets like true capitalists.

There is a rational basis for the government wanting to fund the more inexpensive option that acts as a preventative which dovetails nicely with an irrational anti-vaxxer willing to take the more expensive treatments that are developed by the exact same pharmaceutical companies.

In your faces!! Boom. Welcome to Farb being right!!!!

 

[Port City JJ]

In your faces!! Boom. Welcome to Farb being right!!!!

Congrats! Even when you are not correct you have been "right" the whole time.

There's something about a broken clock.....