Jackson Jambalaya

We’re entering the third year of COVID, a worldwide pandemic, a health emergency that has spun off multitudes of other emergencies many of which have been purely political. We have masked up, social distanced, washed hands, quarantined inside, and locked down all in the name of a health emergency going into its third year. 

How long do health emergencies last? That depends on who’s answering. The government? We’re talking about three levels of elected government: federal, state, and local. All have actively stretched their authority to mandate behaviors. Dig a little deeper and we’ll find lots of other authorities who have mandated behaviors. How big a role has politics played in these mandates compared with the roles of science and medicine? 

Until recently, law has played little to no role in the COVID health emergency drama. Authorities have mandated their mandates and hundreds of thousands have died. Society has been turned upside down to the point we can hardly tell whether we’re living in reality or virtual reality. 

The Supreme Court is hearing two cases regarding President Biden’s vaccine mandates: NFIB/Ohio v. Dept. of Labor, concerning the OSHA mandate, and Biden v. Missouri, over the CMS mandate.

Presidential candidate Joe Biden said he didn’t know whether he would even take a Trump vaccine. His running mate questioned the safety of Trump’s vaccines, too … at the time. 

Magically, after the election Biden and Harris followed the science, were vaccinated, and announced the vaccines would shut down COVID. Seemingly overnight the woke LEFT crowd embraced vaccines as the panacea and silver bullet to stop COVID completely and forever. Hooray! 

It’s funny how the politics of health, safety, and elected officials have affected every aspect of our lives 24/7/365. Which raises the question again: How long do health emergencies last?

Traditionally, justices listen to lawyers from both sides, asking questions as needed to clarify points. In this case lawyers representing states opposed to vaccine mandates would argue against lawyers representing the federal government. So, it startled some court watchers to hear Justice Breyer blurt out that a vaccine mandate would “prevent 100% of cases.” He also blurted there were “750 million new COVID cases yesterday.” Out of 330 million Americans? 

For a while, it seemed three of the justices (Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor) were presenting their own cases justifying vaccine mandates. Justice Sotomayor said, “We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. currently has 3,342 confirmed pediatric hospitalizations with COVID. Somebody did not check Facebook Fact Check before making these outlandish claims. 

Fortunately the other six justices limited their questions and comments to the law. Justice Coney Barrett asked, “When does the emergency end? I mean, a lot of this argument has been about Congress’s failure to act. Two years from now, do we have any reason to think that COVID will be gone or that new variants might not be emerging?”

How will the Supreme Court rule in the two cases against President Biden’s vaccine mandates? The government’s lawyers were calling for a quick ruling since the COVID pandemic is an emergency. “When does the emergency end?” Good question.

 Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at PJandMe2@gmail.com.