patrick.net

Health Freedom Defense Fund, the lead plaintiff in the case that resulted in the lifting of the federal Travel Mask Mandate issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement that it would appeal:

The Justice Department issued a statement in response to the ruling stating that it will appeal if CDC determines that the mask order “remains necessary for the public’s health[.]”

DoJ’s statement is perplexing to say the least and sounds like it comes from health policy advocates not government lawyers. The ruling by the US District Court ruling is a matter of law, not CDC preference or an assessment of “current health conditions.”

If there is in fact a public health emergency with clear and irrefutable science supporting CDC’s mask mandate, does it not warrant urgent action? Why would DoJ and CDC not immediately appeal?

HFDF is left with no option but to conclude that the Mask Mandate is really a political matter and not at all about urgent public health issues or the demands of sound science. While DoJ and CDC play politics with Americans’ health and freedoms, HFDF trusts individual Americans to make their own health decisions.

HFDF is confident that Americans possess ample common sense and education to understand that there are real questions about mask efficacy and risk and that CDC’s policy reflects neither.

What is clear is that Americans have already cast their votes about continued masking as evidenced by the multitude of videos and photos taken by passengers on airplanes showing the smiling faces of the vast majority of passengers responding to the overturning of the mask mandate with cheers as they happily exercise their freedom to remove their masks.

HFDF is confident Judge Mizelle’s ruling will stand.

Finally a judge comes in and throws out the mandate. Many people are upset with the judge. But the judge didn't fail you. The CDC failed you. It never ran a trial. It never generated knowledge. It kept us in the dark. It should be no surprise that it lost it's power and legitimacy. It proved it does not deserve the power it was was entrusted by the people. It failed to use science to reduce uncertainty. We should be ashamed of the organization. I certainly am.

Reuters Article, Breathtakingly, Asks You To Pity Mask Sellers, Facing Hard Times After Mask Mandate Struck Down On Flights
Reuters, Like virtually all "legacy" media, is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

One nation under the CDC
Biden’s fight to save his mask mandate is all about power

April 21, 2022




CDC director Rochelle Walensky removes her face mask in order to spread her droplets to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

For a brief moment, America was the cheering mission control room in every action movie. You know the one: the flight controllers stand there nervously, waiting to hear from the wayward rocket. Then, suddenly, the radio crackles: “Houston,” says a voice, “this is Gemini One…we did it. A federal judge in Florida just struck down the mask mandate.”

And everyone goes wild.

From out of claustrophobic plane cabins and sterile airports this week came unlikely scenes of jubilation as passengers tore off their masks and breathed freely once again. Public transportation had become a kind of last holdout of the Karens; you could go to a jam-packed music festival mask-free but forget to re-cover your mouth while chewing your Amtrak-issued cheesesteak and you were liable to get chucked off of a moving train. Now, no more. Thanks to Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who voided the CDC’s mask requirement on mass transit, travelers can rip off their suffocating, reeking facial prophylactics for good.

Mizelle handed down her ruling on Monday, and instantly the Biden administration was put in a tough spot. As Politico summed it up on Tuesday, “The White House is still figuring out what to do next, weighing two very big factors: credibility and politics.” ...

Call it the politician’s dilemma: cheap political advantage versus protecting bureaucrats. Ultimately, Biden decided to punt to the CDC, which was as good as heading to court, since no government department ever willingly gives up its own power. Sure enough, the agency chose to appeal. ...

The funniest part about all this is the stated rationale behind it. “The CDC’s credibility,” Democrats solemnly warn, “is on the line.” But then since when has the CDC had any credibility left to lose? This is the same medical bureaucracy that told Americans for months to socially distance only to suddenly discover an exemption for BLM rioters. It’s the same bureaucracy that recommended cloth masks only to announce back in January that they weren’t very effective. It’s the same bureaucracy that said those who are vaccinated don’t need to wear masks only to discover that they do.

Even CNN’s Brian Stelter has said the agency is “a punchline,” and Brian Stelter travels with his own laugh track. I understand this is a novel coronavirus and experts are still scrambling to figure it out. But two years on, it’s hard to escape the impression that the CDC makes decisions chiefly by dropping watermelons off of a building onto a chalk-drawn target.

Note well what Judge Mizelle said in her ruling. She didn’t strike down mask mandates as unconstitutional. She didn’t gut the CDC. She didn’t find that masks were a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment (though some of us, the weary and glasses-befogged, wish she had). All she did was to notice that the CDC had claimed enormous emergency powers while failing to go through proper regulatory channels. The agency can now use those channels if it wishes. It can also call upon the powers of an ancient and mist-shrouded branch of government known as “Congress,” which can enact mask mandates on trains, planes, double-masted schooners, whatever it wants.

The problem is that the Biden administration knows even a friendly Congress isn’t going to do that in an election year. And that’s the cream in the coffee: it is the public, not Judge Mizelle, that has kneecapped the CDC. They aren’t listening to the agency and haven’t been for some time. Yet the Democrats also need the CDC right now more than ever, at least as a matter of principle. With Republicans likely to take control of the House and Senate and with GOP-appointed judges dominating the judiciary, the left is increasingly dependent on the unelected bureaucracy to advance its agenda.

Hence why Biden must now fight to preserve the CDC’s absolute supremacy. No word yet on which Federalist paper makes clear that Dr. Rochelle Walensky gets to run everything. But at least now they can see our faces as we glower in disapproval.

To propose that any government action be immune to judicial oversight – that is, immune to oversight by the formal guardians of the law – is to propose that the officials who perform that action are above the law. As Reason’sEric Boehm wrote in reaction to this authoritarian outburst by Fauci, “This is either a complete misunderstanding of the American system’s basic functions or an expression of disdain toward the rule of law.”

Arnie1974
@Arnie1974
·
Apr 24
Fauci Above the Law: Dr. Death Sets Up Defense Against Being Prosecuted

Dr. Robert Malone: "Tony is finally revealing he has gone full out with the case that the public health system is above the law. That's what he's saying. And I wonder whether this is a foreshadowing of his defense in the event that... Ron Johnson finds himself head of the Subcommittee on investigation because Tony Fauci has to be held accountable, and he's already kind of gaming the system by saying, 'Hey, I'm above the law.' That is quite literally what he is saying. He is saying not only is he above the law, so is the CDC and the entire HHS and public health infrastructure in the United States. This cannot be allowed to stand."

Mask Study Finds No Impact on Covid Infections From Mask-Wearing and an INCREASE in Deaths

on thursday afternoon, a mandate to bring back masks and mandatory hand sanitizing in all public spaces, indoor and out, emerged PR health secretary carlos lopez to whom authority to set covid regulations and intrude upon everyone’s lives and livelihoods has been delegated by the governor. ...

“turned the hornet’s nest upside down” is an apt choice of phrase.

from what i saw, it pretty much looked like this:

While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.

“your mask protects me” was a wonderful soundbite to shift responsibility for my superstitious anxiety to you. but it never had ANY basis in fact. ...

even as efficacy claims fell to pieces, the masqueraders fell back to this position:

“it’s really not a big deal. do it for me. even if it works a little or makes people feel better, where is the harm? why not try?”

but even this has fallen to pieces. masks wrecked schools and learning. they also impeded the social and verbal development of infants and toddlers. ...

what if masks really were making everyone quite a lot worse off and unable to concentrate because they were getting too much CO2?

because it’s sure starting to look like they did. frequent sounding board and gatopal™ andrew bostom (professor at brown university med school and a rare beacon of principled reason at the gato alma mater) explains here...

but like so many other things covid, all this past knowledge was not only ignored but inverted, especially with regard to children who have been subjected to masking rules no workplace would have been permitted to implement before 2020.

and based on this data, they really bore the brunt of it.




... interestingly, this CO2 study may provide the answer to another of the interesting issues of masking and infection: surgeons who wear them during surgery wind up with higher rates of post op infection in their patients.

Daniela Jampel
@daniela127

Yesterday my toddler threw up at school. I was there to pick her up and saw it happen. Because we have TheNYCScience™️, she was wearing a mask. Yes you read that correctly she THREW UP IN HER MASK.

I have a picture but it is actually too disgusting to share. You're welcome.
May 18, 2022

Masking was the single most common non-pharmaceutical intervention in the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Most countries have implemented recommendations or mandates regarding the use of masks in public spaces. The aim of this short study was to analyse the correlation between mask usage against morbidity and mortality rates in the 2020-2021 winter in Europe. Data from 35 European countries on morbidity, mortality, and mask usage during a six-month period were analysed and crossed. Mask usage was more homogeneous in Eastern Europe than in Western European countries. Spearman's correlation coefficients between mask usage and COVID-19 outcomes were either null or positive, depending on the subgroup of countries and type of outcome (cases or deaths). Positive correlations were stronger in Western than in Eastern European countries. These findings indicate that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage.

A parallelization analysis based on county-level data showed that in Kansas, counties with mask mandate had significantly higher case fatality rates than counties without mask mandate, with a risk ratio of 1.85 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 1.51–2.10) for COVID-19-related deaths. Even after adjusting for the number of “protected persons,” that is, the number of persons who were not infected in the mask-mandated group compared to the no-mask group, the risk ratio remained significantly high at 1.52 (95% CI: 1.24–1.72). By analyzing the excess mortality in Kansas, this study determines that over 95% of this effect can solely be attributed to COVID-19.

These findings suggest that mask use might pose a yet unknown threat to the user instead of protecting them, making mask mandates a debatable epidemiologic intervention.

The cause of this trend is explained herein using the “Foegen effect” theory; that is, deep re-inhalation of hypercondensed droplets or pure virions caught in facemasks as droplets can worsen prognosis and might be linked to long-term effects of COVID-19 infection.

The Gray Lady (quietly) concedes that masks have zero impact on COVID
And if the NYTimes were a real newspaper, dedicated to the truth, and public good, it would be HEADLINING that "discovery," to get all those STILL wearing masks to TAKE THEM OFF!

Once upon a time, the DOJ, said it would appeal a judges ruling against mandatory mask wearing on airplanes if the CDC asked it to. Well, the CDC asked the DOJ to appeal and the DOJ said it would.

It seems that settled science (political science) has trumped this stance as it seems this case has been put to the wayside.

The DOJ is supposed to be apolitical. Just add this to the Department of Jokes memes.

They must've heard me bitching and filed. They still don't deserve a paycheck.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/justice-department-appeals-mask-mandate-ruling-but-here-s-why-it-won-t-matter-to-you-for-now/ar-AAXYKXy?li=BBnbklE