The left's addiction to virus fears

 Jonathon Tobin:

Democrats, Big Tech social media companies and the mainstream liberal media have spent two years raging about the spread of coronavirus misinformation, pointing their fingers at conservatives resisting government efforts to curb the disease’s spread via lockdowns, mask requirements and vaccine mandates.

But it turns out the source of some of the worst pandemic myths wasn’t right-wing podcasters booted from Twitter for the sin of disagreeing with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

They came from liberal Supreme Court justices.

On Friday, the high court heard oral arguments about the Biden administration’s push to impose vaccine mandates on private employers. The case involves a dubious effort to twist Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations meant to prevent health hazards specific to the workplace to include diseases that can be caught anywhere. But this problematic expansion of government power over the private sector and the rights of individuals to govern what is put into their bodies — the mantra of “My body, my choice” apparently only applies to abortions — was not the main takeaway.

Instead, it was the whoppers about the COVID threat from the three members of the court’s liberal faction.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor falsely asserted that COVID deaths are at an all-time high and the Omicron variant, which produces mild symptoms, “is as deadly as Delta.” Most egregiously she claimed, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.”

As even CDC chief Rochelle Walensky later conceded, fewer than 5,000 children are in hospitals with COVID. Many, if not most, were not hospitalized for COVID but merely tested positive on admission for another ailment. And children are, as they have been throughout the pandemic, the least affected by the virus.

The same is true for hospitalized adults, with Walensky admitting that at least 40 percent of all cases counted as COVID are not people who required hospitalization because of the virus. Most of those who have died have had up to four comorbidities that were responsible for their plight.

Sotomayor was not alone in spreading misinformation.

Justice Elena Kagan claimed vaccines and masks prevent the spread of the disease: Workers, she said, “have to get vaccinated so that you’re not transmitting the disease that can kill elderly Medicare patients, that can kill sick Medicaid patients. I mean, that seems like a pretty basic infection prevention measure.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t true. The vaccine reduces the seriousness of COVID in those afflicted, but it doesn’t stop the vaccinated from catching or spreading it.

Justice Stephen Breyer also falsely asserted that the vaccine prevents infection, hospitals are overflowing with COVID patients at death’s door and the country reported “750 million new cases” the day before — though America’s total population is around 330 million.
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Covid has apparently triggered the three liberal justices' misinformation machine.  It is really unusual to see the justices so intent on pushing something that just is not true.