Supreme Court docket Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Getty Pictures
Democrats, Large Tech social media corporations and the mainstream liberal media have spent two years raging concerning the unfold of coronavirus misinformation, pointing their fingers at conservatives resisting authorities efforts to curb the illness’s unfold through lockdowns, masks necessities and vaccine mandates.
However it seems the supply of a number of the worst pandemic myths wasn’t right-wing podcasters booted from Twitter for the sin of disagreeing with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
They got here from liberal Supreme Court docket justices.
On Friday, the excessive courtroom heard oral arguments concerning the Biden administration’s push to impose vaccine mandates on non-public employers. The case entails a doubtful effort to twist Occupational Security and Well being Administration rules meant to stop well being hazards particular to the office to incorporate illnesses that may be caught anyplace. However this problematic growth of presidency energy over the non-public sector and the rights of people to manipulate what's put into their our bodies — the mantra of “My physique, my selection” apparently solely applies to abortions — was not the primary takeaway.
As a substitute, it was the whoppers concerning the COVID menace from the three members of the courtroom’s liberal faction.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor falsely asserted that COVID deaths are at an all-time excessive and the Omicron variant, which produces gentle signs, “is as lethal as Delta.” Most egregiously she claimed, “We now have over 100,000 youngsters, which we’ve by no means had earlier than, in critical situation, and lots of on ventilators.”
As even CDC chief Rochelle Walensky later conceded, fewer than 5,000 youngsters are in hospitals with COVID. Many, if not most, weren't hospitalized for COVID however merely examined optimistic on admission for an additional ailment. And youngsters are, as they've been all through the pandemic, the least affected by the virus.
The identical is true for hospitalized adults, with Walensky admitting that at the very least 40 % of all circumstances counted as COVID will not be individuals who required hospitalization due to the virus. Most of those that have died have had as much as 4 comorbidities that have been liable for their plight.
Sotomayor was not alone in spreading misinformation.
Justice Elena Kagan claimed vaccines and masks forestall the unfold of the illness: Employees, she stated, “need to get vaccinated so that you just’re not transmitting the illness that may kill aged Medicare sufferers, that may kill sick Medicaid sufferers. I imply, that looks like a reasonably primary an infection prevention measure.”
Sadly, this isn’t true. The vaccine reduces the seriousness of COVID in these bothered, but it surely doesn’t cease the vaccinated from catching or spreading it.
Justice Stephen Breyer additionally falsely asserted that the vaccine prevents an infection, hospitals are overflowing with COVID sufferers at dying’s door and the nation reported “750 million new circumstances” the day earlier than — although America’s complete inhabitants is round 330 million.
It’s honest to ask how three of the people who find themselves supposedly among the many smartest within the land might be so poorly knowledgeable. However it additionally speaks volumes about the way in which the mainstream media has helped unfold COVID dishonesty meant to gasoline the sort of worry of the illness that lies behind these fibs.
Misinformation has come from those that dwell within the fever swamps of the far proper and the far left. However a number of the worst of the fallacies concerning the pandemic have come from public well being officers and their dutiful enablers within the mainstream media.
Bent on scaring folks into compliance with arbitrary guidelines which have modified constantly as they’ve reacted to a disaster for which they have been unprepared, the specialists have usually inspired the sort of exaggerations and errors that the three Supreme Court docket liberals repeated.
The excessive courtroom listening to wasn’t simply fodder for a truth test that earned liberal judges scorn. It must be a wake-up name for the remainder of us to grasp that the true drawback right here isn’t a illness. It’s the way in which those that must know higher have gone together with fearmongering meant to quash opposition to essentially the most heavy-handed COVID rules whatever the fact.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org.
Twitter: @jonathans_tobin
Post a Comment