Ah yesâŚsnake-oil salesman never die, and they are bipartisan.
As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise sharply in Missouri, local health departments are abandoning efforts to stop the spread of the pandemic disease, saying their hands have been tied by the stateâs attorney general and a recent court ruling.
The ruling comes from Judge Daniel Green of the Cole County Circuit Court, who entered a judgment on November 22 in the case of Shannon Robinson, et. al., v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). Robinson and her co-plaintiffs challenged health agenciesâ powers to issue restrictions to prevent the spread of disease, such as ordering quarantines. Attorney General Schmitt defended DHSS in the case and has refused to appeal its outcome.
Green ruled, essentially, that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate disease prevention powers to unelected health officials.
âThe authority that the DHSS regulations purport to grant to an administrative official to implement control measures and create and enforce orders is open-ended discretionâa catch-all to permit naked lawmaking by bureaucrats throughout Missouri,â Green wrote in his judgment.
I donât have the expertise to comment on whether or not this ruling is legally sound, but Iâm confident that it is going to be actively harmful to the populace.
If itâs not the authority of the health departments to take measures to combat a global pandemic, whose is it? The AG is clearly uninterested, and it is well documented that the governor wants as many of his citizens to die as possible.
In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Carroll elaborated on the threats, saying they came from âa bunchâ of people and included racial slurs and mentions of his wife and children. Someone also sent a note to Carrollâs rabbi, threatening the synagogue.
"This is ridiculous,â Carroll told the Sun-Times. âWe just canât have a reasonable conversation anymore⌠Iâve heard from reasonable people that do disagree with my billâand I appreciate them being reasonable and I appreciate them making their pointâbut if you want to just go the route of calling people names and calling people racial slurs and threatening them and things like that, itâs impossible to have conversations at that point.â
Given that Tasmania has remained mostly open to the uninfected states throughout this, and continues to require quarantine for international arrivals, this âreopeningâ is basically just a dropping of the quarantine restrictions for people from NSW and Vic.
Both of which are currently experiencing a large surge of infection thanks to uncontrolled Omicron. Which appears to be significantly infectious amongst those vaxxed with AstraZeneca. Which is what all the grannies I live amongst were dosed with.
Yay.
I think Iâll stay mostly at home for a few weeks.
On the way to the Million-Death March.
SAM installations on the islands should take care of Sydney and Adelaide, but we may need a few AA cruisers north of Devonport to keep out the Melbourne planes.
Axios has some interesting vaccination statistics:
Letâs hope the spring green color expands over the coming months (but Iâm not expecting the piss yellow color to change).
Until very recently, the whole âeligible for boosterâ thing was quite different. Now that theyâve opened it up, that part should go down quite a bit.
One day.
A sensible Covid response would have taken the necessity of masks as an opportunity to globally normalise and permanently institutionalise the east Asian norm of masking during any outbreak of respiratory infection.
Instead, we have a constant bipartisan effort to resist masking as much as possible. Because they think itâs bad for business and creates complications for the police state.
Weâll be there this winter. Meanwhile, in TN, hardly anyone wears a mask.
