I & I Editorial BoardAs soon as President Joe Biden announced his plan for a widespread vaccine mandate to fight COVID-19, protests erupted. And rightly so. But the real reason Biden chose now to announce it is so he could claim credit for what is already happening with COVID.
In what is almost certainly a vast overreach of his executive authority, Biden declared that he’d develop “an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their work forces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”
Of course, this mandate will raise constitutional challenges. Which is no doubt what Biden wants.
After all, if such a move is constitutional – and there are no shortage of “experts” who say that it is – then God help us all. Because that would open the door to federal intervention into our daily lives on an unprecedented scale. All that would be needed is to declare something, anything an “emergency.”
It’s no accident, for example, that the left now calls it a “climate emergency” instead of “global warming.” Why not use that to mandate that Americans working at large companies ditch their gas-powered cars? Biden could declare racism an “emergency” and force any business with 100 or more employees to conduct critical race theory courses.
But there’s another reason Biden is pushing this mandate now.
From the case data, it would appear as though the current outbreak has already peaked. Look at the chart below. The curve has “flattened,” and the seven-day moving average is now on the downtrend.
That would, of course, follow the pattern of previous COVID surges, and every outbreak of contagious diseases. Outbreaks always follow a curve, even if the government does nothing.
What’s more, in this case, the claim that we face an emergency is fatuous.
While the number of new COVID cases has been high, the number of deaths per case is lower than it’s ever been. The case fatality rate since June is 0.1%, which is half of what it was during the previous year’s outbreak.
Claiming credit for something he had nothing to do with has quickly become Biden’s defining characteristic (especially when it’s combined with his penchant for pointing fingers when his own decisions lead to disaster).
Soon after taking over the White House, he claimed that there was no vaccine distribution plan – so he could claim credit for every vaccination that took place. He claimed that Trump hadn’t ordered enough vaccines, so he could claim credit for that, too.
Regarding the economy, Biden said earlier this month that “The measures we’ve taken so far have brought America out of an economic freefall, steadied us, and enabled us to grow our economy even as we combat — continue to combat COVID.”
As we’ve pointed out many times in this space, that is an outright lie. The economy was booming when Biden came into office. The GDP had, in fact, recovered almost all the ground lost during what was the shortest recession in history – and one that ended almost a full year before Biden took office – by the time Biden signed his “American Recovery Plan” into law.
Biden gets away with saying such things because the media won’t call out his lies the way they instantly fact-checked whatever came out of President Donald Trump’s mouth.
So, when the decline in new COVID cases is undeniable, Biden will no doubt rush out to the podium to declare that his get-tough-on-vaccines stance is why the country turned the corner. And, as a bonus, he might even get vast new presidential mandate powers to boot.
Biden’s mental capacity may be seriously failing, but he still has an unquenchable thirst for big government, and an unmatched ability at self-aggrandizement.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Armando Simón
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
1) April 2, 2020 “California Governor Newsom: Yes, We Will Use Coronavirus to ‘Reimagine a Progressive Era’ “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”
2) September 2021 “CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines are “waning,” “We are seeing concerning evidence of waning vaccine effectiveness over time …”
3) CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a White House Press Briefing “Reports from our international colleagues, including Israel, suggest increased risk of severe disease amongst those vaccinated early.”
4) “the British Medical Journal, the Lancet found that fully vaccinated people carry 251 times the viral load of coronavirus as compared to those who have not received one of the controversial vaccines.”
[BTW Why did the “settled science” of Global Warming morph into the safely vague “Climate Cgange”?]
I trust we’ve learnt over time, certainly since Rahm Emanuel’s aphorism, that there’s no point in mentioning Covid in any court proceeding there might be; it’s the principle of mandate issuance that matters, not the nature of the ’emergency’.
What’s next – claiming the nation is in the midst of crime emergency and mandating Diazepam daily?
Almost a year ago it was reported from the UK and EU, that COVID rates increased as more of the population was vaxxed. We see that still in the UK today, and in France, as both are headed into third and maybe fourth booster jabs. NY, Michigan and other USA states, including most recently California, have also seen rising numbers of COVID cases as more of the population is vaxxed. Currently, Israel and Iceland have seen COVID rates increasing as the population gets fully vaxxed (70-90%) and moves onto third and fourth booster jabs. Israel and the Palestine territories make for a great contrast, the Palestine territories having very little vaxxing and very little COVID. When 3-4 jabs in about a year are associated with more COVID, scientific minds should be looking towards alternate solutions rather than doubling, tripling and quadrupling jabs.
Logically, based on the experiences in the UK, EU, Israel and Iceland and some USA states, one could hypothesize that as workplaces become fully vaxxed by mandate, the incidence of COVID should increase. Politically, that would be advantageous to Biden, Pelosi, et al., as it would provide reason for more mandates and more multi-trillion-dollar emergency legislation.
Why not investigate hitting the COVID virus with a variety of remedies, versus just the one tool (vaxxing)? There is no scientific basis for assuming that mRNA vaccines (really more immune system or antibody stimulants than vaccines in the classical sense of attenuated viruses, like used in the Chinese vaccines) are the only means of attacking viruses. Why have we abandoned border quarantines, a traditional tool? We have gone from Trump closing the border to China, to opening the southern border as an epicenter for spreading virus nationwide. In short, Biden is doing all the wrong things, just like in Kabul, unless the real objective is to lose to advance a political goal.