You’ll note the words and phrases “policy” , “to the extent feasible” and so on. It’s nonsense, and will never have the force of law once you have entered the state, past the USCIS border checkpoint or otherwise off Federal property.
It’s nonsense, and will never have the force of law once you have entered the state, past the USCIS border checkpoint or otherwise off Federal property.
Executive orders can have force of federal law as of the signature date and are valid both on and off federal property – as can be attested by US residents of Japanese descent interned pursuant to FDRs EO 9066.
The endless cycle of competition between a Federal and state power is an intentional feature of American politics, but happily Alexander Hamilton’s 18th century instincts weren’t followed and state governors aren’t appointed by the Feds. What happens with a contentious issue when the president forgets he isn’t in Venezuela is that states ignore him, if pushed enough pass state laws in direct opposition etc. The state and local police (there is no meaningful Federal police force, the border patrol would be closest in this case) enforce state and local law by the book, and so it goes.
Obviously in this instance the idea of CDC guidelines being enforced uniformly in all states as law by presidential dictate is ludicrous: for example thousands of Americans are traveling overseas, to Mexico etc and no, in the absence of state or local law they aren’t going into quarantine upon their return. It wouldn’t even occur to them as being legally mandated.
Otherwise the theatre of people in the US “being able” to gather by July 4th is the most amusing one recently, it made a lot of people scratch their heads or smile at the completely disconnected world view being expressed.
As a now age 80 male
If it wasn’t for CV19, we would by now have had a fly-in in Maoraigh’s honour 
And I think we really should!
Back in the first wave the Guardian ran a piece with portrait photographs of all the ‘front-line heroes’ (docs, nurses and hospital staff) who had died of Covid-19 up to that point. What was immediately noticeable, but of course could not be commented on, was that they were nearly all quite fat. The media described them as ‘healthy’ – i.e. none had severe pre-existing medical conditions, but of course the term ‘healthy’ is relative.
The same observation is readily made regarding portrait photos of a group of cancer patients, but again cannot be commented on. Whatever makes one “big” is also great for feeding cancers of most types.
Maoraigh wrote:
As a now age 80 male, who received the AstraZeneca first dose, I found this statement in the Icelandic Review Online comforting.“While a link has been found between rare instances of blood clots and the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, such instances are limited to women under 60, the Chief Epidemiologist stated.”
I guess my mother in law, who received her first dose last Tuesday, might as well seeing that she is 89.
She did get quite upset though when their national TV news that very evening started to go slightly berserk on the whole thing. The question in my mind is what are they trying to achieve. The whole AZ saga has greatly undermined public trust in the vaccination process in many places, quite a few people will rather subject themselves to the risk of infection in this 3rd wave because of it. That is a great shame.
I still do not understand what drives half of the policies around the mainland. Totally baffling. For example Spain is not using AZ over 65. Unless one pretends that the UK (which has done ~18M with AZ) doesn’t exist. OK; maybe they think the UK is fiddling the numbers and is happy to kill x% of its population, but anybody with a scientific education and particularly anybody in the vaccine stats business will know that cannot possibly be the case. That is the age range where there is absolutely no doubt about its value
What does anyone have to gain from this? Is it still “demand management” i.e. suppressing demand for AZ so the politicians look less incompetent? It clearly was that in the early days of slagging off AZ.
Interestingly, the slagging off of AZ (and the UK in thin disguise) by UVDL has recently died down. I wonder what has changed?
This is staggering. 20% anti-vaxxers among care home staff. But this is down from 40% or so, so progress is being made.
Peter wrote:
Interestingly, the slagging off of AZ (and the UK in thin disguise) by UVDL has recently died down. I wonder what has changed?
My guess would be that they’ve struck a quiet deal behind the scenes and asked AZ to send them a little bit of vaccine from the UK factories in exchange for an end to the shouting and screaming and not trying to interfere with Pfizer.
AZ also appears to have sent some from the UK factories to Australia – obviously with the consent of the UK government, seeing as Australia cannot get AZ exported from the EU as planned. There is a predictable exchange of statements – the EC says AZ has not made another export application, Australia retaliates by saying yes of course because they knew it would be denied.
Rather unusually for the The Guardian the article talks about the number of doses in terms of the good they could do in the UK – something seemingly designed to whip up nationalist sentiment. It won’t work though – I’d wager the UK public would be delighted to send any reasonable quantity to Australia.
Maybe a 3-way deal was done whereby Brussels backs off trying to blockade Pfizer (a US company, without doubt p1ssed off with Brussels by now) exports to the UK, while Moderna (a US company, which would strongly prefer to not get the same treatment as Pfizer and AZ got) is allowed to ship some of theirs to the UK instead, knowing the UK will be grateful, pay the asking price, and be pleased about it.
That is what I would have tried. Path of least resistance. One day we will find out
After seeing the Icelandic statement, I saw in the Daily Mail an appeal to take the AZ, from the family of a male in his 50s who’d died after the AZ vaccine.
I had assumed the Chief Epidemiologist was quoting from more than just Icelandic statistics.
Sure, but somebody will die of “something” if you have millions involved, and the media will make some air time out of it, and I suppose we can’t expect the media to behave responsibly, but the Chief Epidemiologist should be an intelligent person who can issue a message that conveys the statistical risk.
The problem is that the politics involved is impenetrable.
