DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
64% of them are boosters though.
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Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion
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Flugell
Well-Known Member
Surely the ONLY thing that is of any importance is IF it is DANGEROUS. My husband is immunocompromised and has many hospital appointments as a result. I am very grateful that I am in the U.K.. The only circumstances that I can envisage that non vaccinated should be allowed to treat patients is if they have to declare their vaccination status and patients are offered an alternative medical practitioner of a similar status immediately. For some the vaccination status may not be an issue-they may not be vaccinated or overly concerned. For those who are concerned there should be an alternative.
Andrew C
You know what's funny?
Uh. No. I am Sorry, that’s really not how it works. And please don’t shoot the messenger but being in favor of a particular mandate has nothing to do whether it is lawful. And a judge doesn’t get to ignore the law. However, how one judge interprets the law may be different than another and they could reach differing rulings. It’s sort of why we have appeals courts and the Supreme Court.
Tom P.
Well-Known Member
No, that is definitely not the only thing that is of any importance. In fact, from a legal perspective, it's really not of any importance at all. The president has a specific, defined set of powers that are under his authority. He doesn't gain new ones simply because something is important or a good idea. Even in a crisis, he is limited to what the law allows. The question being argued here is not whether mandates are a good idea or not. The question is whether he can do it on his own or whether it requires Congress to pass legislation. Ultimately, I think it will end up being the Supreme Court that decides that.
Flugell
Well-Known Member
Not trying to shoot the messenger at all! Thanks for the reply!
It is why I pointed out that I’m glad I’m in the U.K.!
I just find it hard to understand why a mandate issued by the President of the United States of America could be suspended by a judge, though I may have misunderstood this. If the Supreme Court is likely to make the final decision should the mandate not remain in place until that decision is made? The verdict of the judge(s) that has ruled so far should be considered by the Supreme Court who may decide to agree with them, or maybe not!
If my husband were treated by an unvaccinated medical practitioner and then caught COVID-19 in any of the various variants and then, God forbid, died, I would be seeking legal advice as to the possibility of suing for negligence at the lower end and murder at the extreme end. I realise that he could also be infected by someone who is fully vaccinated with the same consequences but at least that could be regarded as bad luck rather than a poor (in my opinion) choice. I know this may sound ridiculous but he is the love of my life!
I do understand the need for all decisions/mandates to be legal and that in the USA that is complicated but the right to life is enshrined in the constitution. Surely that covers it? Amendment 14 section 1, I believe.
I think my feelings are based primarily on a lack of understanding of the way the USA functions as a whole and the powers available to individual states so please excuse me if I have got it all wrong!
My primary thought is that patients should be given the option to be treated by vaccinated or non vaccinated medical practitioners according to their needs and beliefs.
Anyway thanks for explaining. Stay safe.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
In the US the courts determine the validity of government actions. The states are sort of in between the status of Scotland and Wales in the UK and the individual countries of the European Union. The original states were separate countries and so the federal government was set up as those separate countries giving some power to the new government and keeping the other powers for themselves. Professions and healthcare are widely regulated by the states.
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
I think what will be decided is that Congress has to pass a law that gives the power to the executive branch specifically to mandate vaccinations under certain conditions.
This rule by executive order (by both parties) needs to be reigned in by the courts.
Tom P.
Well-Known Member
I can certainly understand how our system could be confusing for someone who is not from the United States. I imagine I would find the UK system equally baffling because I know nothing about it.
You have to remember that in the United States, the three branches of government are considered equal. So it's not the president at the top. He is the head of the executive branch and, yes, has a lot of power in the day-to-day implementation of policy. But the legislative branch (i.e., Congress) and the judicial branch (i.e., the courts) are equal and can, depending on the circumstances, limit or stop what the president does. The president, in fact, has very few inherent powers given to him by the Constitution. Most everything he is able to do has to be pursuant to some sort of legislation passed by Congress, though in practice they have delegated a great deal of autonomy to him. That's what's being debated in the courts now, though -- whether the president has the authority to issue vaccine mandates or whether that would take a new law passed by Congress.
Regarding whether or not the mandates should be in place while this works its way up to the Supreme Court, that is a complicated question. But it is not uncommon for our courts to issue a temporary injunction where they halt the implementation of a law, regulation, or executive order until a final decision by the courts is made. That decision is supposed to be made both on an analysis of who seems likely to prevail in the end, but also whether or not there will be "irreparable harm" if the particular policy is allowed to stand temporarily. In this case, for example, there is no way to undo a vaccination. So even if the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against the mandate, anyone who has been vaccinated in the meantime because of the mandate could not reverse that. For whatever reason, the courts so far have pretty uniformly decided to put the mandates on hold until the final ruling is made.
Tom P.
Well-Known Member
Agreed.
If I did, I would have bought big on Moderna stock in 2019 and held on. Their CEO did well, he's now worth billions.
Yodascousin
Active Member
Would the president be able to enforce a quarantine order for visitors coming to the us and returning citizens?
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
Id have to research but I'd imagine that the power was included in the laws that govern the international border. There's rule 42 (I think I'm remembering that correctly but maybe not) that allows for refusal of entry based on communicable disease.
Yodascousin
Active Member
Tff
Thanks because there’s rumours that all arrivals must self isolate for seven days after arrival and wondered if that was actually enforceable or viable
Thanks because there’s rumours that all arrivals must self isolate for seven days after arrival and wondered if that was actually enforceable or viable
Danissmart
Member
No and no.
Danissmart
Member
correcaminos
Well-Known Member
Dr ANGELIQUE COETZEE, who discovered Omicron says we are over-reacting
Dr ANGELIQUE COETZEE: Nothing has prepared me for the extraordinary global reaction that met my announcement this week about the discovery of the Omicron variant.
DisneyFan32
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
- The CDC says Omicron is not in the US yet.
- But Dr. Charity Dean, a former top health official in California, who warned about the spread of COVID-19 in the US early on in the pandemic and long before federal experts did, says there's no way that's true.
- "Our case ascertainment rate is zero," Dean said, but she has "no doubt that there are in fact cases here."
Dean, a former top-tier official at the California Department of Public Health, was one of the first people to sound the alarm that the coronavirus was alive and moving around the US in early 2020, among people with no travel history to China, where the coronavirus was first discovered.
Her warnings in those early days of the pandemic became so prescient that she was chosen to star in Michael Lewis's latest book, "The Premonition."
White House staffers in the Trump Administration, as well as the nation's top infectious disease advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, listened in on briefing calls where she sounded the alarm as early as February 2020.
Now that Omicron is on the scene, a new variant with a dizzying number of fresh mutations, Dean is once again attempting to warn people that the new viral variant might already be in their backyard.
"I have no doubt that there are in fact cases here in the US right now," Dean told Insider of Omicron. "In fact, my dirty math based on a number of assumptions, including international travel — I would estimate there's around 2,000 cases in the US right now."
Dean bases that assumption on the fact that the Omicron variant has already been found at least 20 countries around the globe, including South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Canada, and the UK. At least 226 cases have already been confirmed, according to the White House. Given that wide spread, Dean suspects the only real reason the US hasn't found Omicron within its borders yet is simply because the country is not looking hard enough for the new variant.
"The challenge for the United States is we are not doing a sufficient amount of genomic sequencing to have detected that," Dean said.
America's viral surveillance has ramped up significantly since the early days of the pandemic, when the US was sequencing less than 1% of coronavirus cases.
Dean says this means "the United States is on the right path" when it comes to viral surveillance, "but we're not quite there yet."
Over the past six months, the US has sequenced and shared nearly 7% of its positive COVID-19 tests, though sequencing capabilities are unevenly spread across the country, meaning surveillance is far better in some areas than in others. Recently, labs haven't been doing as much sequencing as they once were, either. After all, sequencing machines cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to procure, and once health departments do, it generally takes at least 24 to 48 hours to sequence a single sample.
"So many labs ramped down their sequencing efforts, understandably, throughout the Delta surge, when everything was the Delta variant," Dean said.
That cost-saving move means it's harder to be on alert for Omicron now.
"The challenge with having an inadequate amount of genomic sequencing in the US is it makes it much harder to detect a novel variant when it emerges," she said.
The UK and southern Africa have more efficient systems to track Omicron
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is confident that the country is standing ready to find the new variant as soon as it may arrive."We are actively looking for the Omicron variant right here in the United States," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 briefing on Tuesday. "Our variant surveillance system has demonstrated we can reliably detect new variants."
But the reality is that other nations (including South Africa and the UK) have far better health systems in place, to not only sequence the virus, but then link up that information with a person's vaccine status, as well as whether or not they're hospitalized, and how severe their case is.
"Right now, there is no evidence of Omicron in the United States, the Delta variant remains the predominant circulating strain, representing 99.9% of all sequences sampled," Walensky said.
Dean, however, interprets the same finding quite differently.
"Right now, the US has zero detected cases of Omicron, which means our case ascertainment rate is zero," she said. "Genomic sequencing and genomic epidemiology is the disease control of the future."
DisneyFan32
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
New Jersey on Monday reported another 1,843 COVID-19 cases and five confirmed deaths, as statewide coronavirus hospitalizations topped 900 for the first time since Oct. 11.
The state’s seven-day average for new positive tests increased to 1,882, up approximately 13% from a week ago and up 66% from a month ago.
There were 950 patients hospitalized with confirmed (906) or suspected coronavirus cases across New Jersey’s 71 hospitals as of Sunday night, an increase of 57 from the previous 24-hour period. That’s the highest number of patients since Oct. 7
Of those hospitalized, 193 patients were in intensive care (nine more than the night before), with 99 of them on ventilators (10 more). At least 88 patients were discharged statewide in the 24 hours leading up to Sunday night.
Hospitalizations have climbed nearly 36% this month — there were 700 patients on Nov. 1 — but are still down almost 14% since Sept. 1. Nearly all of those hospitalized are not vaccinated.
The statewide positivity rate for Thursday, the most recent day available, was 9.23%. That number, however, is likely reflects a significantly lower number of tests administered on the Thanksgiving holiday than on a typical weekday. The percent positivity for Wednesday was 5.57%.
The transmission declined Monday to 1.18 from 1.2 on Sunday. Any transmission rate above 1 indicates the pandemic is expanding, as each infected person is passing the virus to at least one other person.
The new numbers come amid the discovery of a new coronavirus variant known as omicron that was first identified in southern Africa. The variant sparked concern across the globe Friday though many unanswered questions remain.
“We do not yet know what the omicron variant means for us, but we are still not yet done with delta,” Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday at his latest coronavirus briefing in Trenton. “I urge everyone who is eligible to get out and get their booster. And if you have not even started your first vaccination course, I urge you to do that now.”
Murphy was administered his booster dose of the Pfizer vaccine at Monmouth Medical Center Sunday.
The World Health Organization declared it a “variant of concern,” meaning it may spread more easily, cause serious disease or reduce the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments. It’s not yet clear how significant a threat the variant is or how effective vaccines will be in mitigating it.
To help curb the spread of the variant, the United States restricted travel for non-U.S. citizens from South Africa and seven other countries starting Monday. And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday declared a state of emergency to prepare for winter spikes in COVID-19.
In New Jersey, state officials have recently said they expect statewide COVID-19 numbers to rise as colder weather forces more residents inside and the holiday season brings big gatherings.
They said the latest surge should peak sometime in January — the same as last year — at possibly 2,000 hospitalizations or more.
Officials are encouraging everyone 18 and older in New Jersey who has received their second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines six months ago or longer to get a booster shot. That’s after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this month that it opened booster shot eligibility to all adults. Anyone 18 and older who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was already eligible for a booster two months after their single shot.
As of Monday, New Jersey has reported a total of 54,260 breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated people, leading to 1,160 hospitalizations and 314 deaths, though those represent a small percentage of total cases.
From Nov. 8 to 14, the state reported 12,138 positive tests. Of those, 3,116 were from fully vaccinated people and those cases led to 16 hospitalizations (out of 602 total) and one deaths (out of 85 total).
“We know that for some the initial vaccine courses have begun to wane in terms of preventing infection, but the effectiveness for keeping these same folks out of the hospital or the morgue ... continues to prove the importance of that initial vaccination — and it speaks to the even greater and more immediate importance of getting that booster,” Murphy said Monday.
All of New Jersey’s 21 counties are listed as having “high” rates of coronavirus transmission, according to CDC. The agency is recommending that all people in high transmission counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status.
More than 6.17 million people who live, work or study in New Jersey — a state of about 9.2 million residents — have now been fully vaccinated. More than 8.09 million people in the state have received at least one dose, and more than 1.23 million people have received third doses or boosters.
As of last week, at least 87,500 children between the ages of 5 and 11 in New Jersey have received vaccine doses since federal authorities approved the Pfizer shots for that age group two weeks ago, according to the state.
New Jersey last week publicly reported for the first time the total number of student and staff positive coronavirus tests regardless of how the infections occurred.
The update provided Monday includes 2,449 new student cases and 593 new staff cases through Nov. 21, bringing the totals so far this school year to 27,052 (22,244 student and 4,808 staff cases.)
Those numbers about 62% of the state’s schools providing data (up from nearly 60% last week). More than 85% of school staff are now fully vaccinated in those 2,152 schools providing data.
The delta variant of the virus, which is more contagious than previous variants, represents more than 99% of all cases circulating in New Jersey right now.
New Jersey has now reported 28,348 deaths in the state, including 25,521 confirmed deaths and 2,827 probable deaths - since March 2020. The probable deaths increased Monday by four fatalities.
New Jersey has the third-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S., behind Mississippi and Alabama.
New Jersey has reported 1,084,414 total confirmed cases out of more than 16 million PCR tests conducted since the first case was announced March 4, 2020. The state has also reported more than 165,040 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases.
CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage
At least 8,687 of the state’s COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data. There are active outbreaks at 123 facilities, resulting in 644 current cases among residents and 575 among staffers.
As of Monday, there have been more than 261.7 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 5.2 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 48.2 million) and deaths (more than 776,600) of any nation.
There have been more than 7.6 billion vaccine doses administered globally.
It looks like this is the Healthcare specific order that's under the National Emergency umbrella. Interesting that the news story calls the judge out saying "'indefinite states of emergency' pose 'grave risks' to civil liberties". This is definitely true, but it's hardly new. There should be news stories calling this out for many years. According to Wikipedia there are currently 39 active National Emergencies, and the oldest started November 14, 1979.
Louisiana federal judge blocks Biden vaccine mandate for health care workers nationwide
Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty in Louisiana issued a nationwide injunction Tuesday against President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.www.foxnews.com
Is that the OSHA one or a different order under the National Emergency umbrella?
It's hard to keep track of which order under which authority or which rule under which process something came from and who challenged each. Along with if the challenge is process and authority or action related.
The ping pong of executive order only actions and the inability of Congress to ever clarify and deal with the issues in a more permanent fashion is definitely a problem. I'm not sure it's the Courts that need to fix it, so much as Congress dealing the underlying issues that drive orders instead.
Kevin_W
Well-Known Member
That's a good point. The inability of congress most of the time to actually do anything is what drive the increases in executive orders.
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