Where is the part where the cdc announcement has now enabled and even encouraged non mask using by unvaccinated people?
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Donât bother.
The opposite is happening and mask mandates are being lifted for federal property. I donât think the CDC has the power to impose or lift mask mandates. They just provide guidelines that actual decision-makers can choose to conform with or not.
They basically said that being masked and being vaccinated are, for practical purposes, the same thing. Which is probably true. If this is what they mean, how should they have communicated that?
The argument is that the CDC is not in the business of making public policy. Until Trump, the CDC has historically been an apolitical agency.
So, no. The CDC is supposed to provide information. The politicians are supposed to weigh the science against other concerns and determine the best policy. Unfortunately, weâve elected a lot of bad politicians in the US, but elections have consequences.
Given a sufficiently dangerous situation, the federal government probably has that authority, but the current pandemic probably does not meet that threshold and the authority to impose mask mandates falls to state and local government.
yeah, I dunno if they can require the vaccines, but they can certainly require masks be worn if you donât have the vaccine.
Theyâre not doing anything like this?
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Not sure how to multiquote to make this @microbet too. But I think Johnnyâs first sentence is the key to this whole debate. The cliche about âfollowing the scienceâ or âtrusting scienceâ really undermines useful discussions, because science is only one input to any nontrivial political discussion, and is often ambiguous or in the realm of contestable expert judgment, so things that are actually questions of values or priorities or weighing of costs get recast as fruitless, undecidable scientific struggles. For this very reason, we donât run our government and make political decisions by consulting a guardian class of scientist-kings. Instead, we elect officials to make decisions, theyâre supposed to listen to expert advice and then make good decisions, and lose elections if they make bad calls.
People really do need to know whether they should wear masks indoors after they are vaccinated. They deserve to know. I wear masks indoors and wonât eat inside at a restaurant because I donât know whether itâs safe. I wonât go see a movie because I donât know if itâs safe. Other people think those things are fine even if they arenât vaccinated. Itâs a shitshow. Itâs an important function of the CDC to give people reliable, honest, transparent guidance about those things.
Separately, we live in a society rife with assholes and stricken with a terrible plague, so we need a government to enforce rules that keep society at large safe, even if they are inconvenient or burdensome for some people. Rules need to be made that reflect political judgments about which impositions are fair and which arenât, how we view our moral duties to people who are vulnerable through their own failure to get vaccinated, to what extent we believe the current vax rate reflects low willingness vs low availability, etc., etc. Those judgments are science-informed (at least they need to be to have any chance of being made well), but largely not scientific.
If you try to manage the political process through how you communicate the science, you fuck everything up. As an example, you were concerned a few weeks ago about the CDCâs changes to their assessment of fomite risk specifically because you thought they were shading the scientific guidance to support an independent political determination that schools needed to be open ASAP even if stringent surface-cleaning protocols couldnât work. Thatâs a reasonable suspicion, and itâs arguably justifiable for the CDC to do if they view their job as supporting school reopening, but it ends up really harmful for people who need to know how to allocate resources between deep cleaning and better ventilation. The information channel is corrupted by the political judgment channel, and theyâre both worse off for it.
To finally get to Microbetâs point, itâs frustrating because the CDC has a policy channel to use. This is a really interesting CRS summary of the CDCâs regulatory authority under the Public Health Service Act. Section 361(a) says:
The Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, [authority delegated to the CDC by regulation] is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession.
There are rules for when you can quarantine or detain people, but no other explicit boundaries in the statute. The CRS report has a bunch of analysis about whether there are implicit limitations, but the text of the statute just says that if the CDC thinks its necessary for people to wear masks indoors to prevent interstate COVID transmission, they can require it. Maybe they canât enforce it, but they can make it a legal obligation. And this is not just theoretical. CDC did make it illegal to evict tenants out of concern that evictions would lead to COVID spread. Thatâs a major regulatory action! Itâs also been challenged, and maybe a court will hold that it was beyond their authority, but thereâs definitely no consistent reading of the statute where the CDC has the authority to ban evictions and they donât have the authority to require masks. If they think people need to wear masks indoors for enforceability reasons, they should make that the rule. Trying to get to that outcome by massaging science communications doesnât work and also compromises the science communication mission, which is very important in its own right.
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Theyâre just being good socialist central planners - culling society of the stupid children is a step toward a brighter future for the rest of us.
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People really deserve to know when they can see family safely again after being vaccinated. Itâs really hard to communicate to people that they can spend time with their loved ones again in an indoor setting if vaxxed without explaining how that applies to other indoor settings.
National eviction ban was overturned.
eta: There is contention that this decision doesnât apply widely.
eta: And of course there have been plenty of evictions in states that havenât also banned them.
eta: I sort of like unenforceable, ignored laws on principle because they foster disobedience and disrespect of authority, but Iâm not sure you would agree with that principle.
one of my earliest arguments with johnny was about trusting people in lab coats to not do evil things. so this parable brings back all the feels.
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Thanks, I missed that somehow. Opinion is here. Based on constitutional grounds rather than statutory interpretation, interestingly.
Constutional grounds seems correct. Obviously the way they couched that law, about international and interstate travel (probably an attempt at commerce) they were trying to put this in the federal governmentâs authority and it seems to me like it wouldnât be.
AZ vaccine gives better-than-expected 90% reduction in cases
Public Health England has just published real-world data - as opposed to those from clinical trials - suggesting having a second dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine lifts its efficacy from about 60% to 90%.
We had already seen data on the effectiveness of the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, but these are the first to estimate the effects of the second dose of the AZ vaccine.
The study, published by PHE, looked at cases of coronavirus detected in the community among those aged over 65 (the first groups to be vaccinated).
It found that, a fortnight after the first dose of the Pfizer or AZ vaccine, the odds of getting symptomatic Covid fell by nearly 60%, consistent with previous reports.
After a second dose of Pfizer or AZ, cases were about 90% lower than among those who had not been vaccinated.
These results are better than those observed in the clinical trials and those assumed by scientific modellers supporting the most recent unlocking.
Transmission still the big unknown but looking like 60%+
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I would be rather surprised if the transmission% is lower than the infection%.
ok, edited to 60%+
I donât have a strong opinion one way or the other on this mini-debate, but that is a bad analogy.
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TaiwanâŚ
âDoctors were not taking it seriously, hospitals were not alert, they were not doing a lot of contact tracing. There was definitely a certain sense of complacency.â
This was especially highlighted when Taiwan relaxed its quarantine requirements for non-vaccinated airline pilots from an initial 14-day period, to five days - and then, just three days.
Shortly afterwards, a cluster broke out connected to a handful of China Airlines pilots who had been staying at a Novotel near Taoyuan Airport. Many of those linked to this cluster were later found to have contracted the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7.
The virus then spread through the community, eventually making its way to Taiwanâs âtea housesâ - adult entertainment venues.
SingaporeâŚ
Authorities later found out that a number of infected airport staff had been working in a zone that received travellers from high-risk countries, including those in South Asia.
Some of these workers then went on to have their meals in the airportâs food courts - which are open to members of the public - further spreading the virus.
Many of the infected were later found to have a highly contagious variant that first surfaced in India - known as B.1.617.
It isnt a hard and fast date. Some places changed requirements immediately, a number of states accelerated but still 7-10 days out.
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