The Wisconsin Supreme Court blocked Democratic Gov. Tony Evers from issuing any new public health emergency orders to mandate face masks. In a 4-3 decision that broke along ideological lines, the conservative majority found that Evers lacked authority for his order. It is similar to a ruling rejecting orders by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. What was most striking was the dissenting opinion from the three liberal justices. The dissenting justice adopted the most convoluted and artificial construct to ignore the plain meaning of the controlling state law.
Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for the majority based on the express language of the state law that mandates that governors may issue health emergencies for 60 days but then the Legislature must approve any extension. Thus, Hagedorn wrote “The question in this case is not whether the Governor acted wisely; it is whether he acted lawfully. We conclude he did not.”
Look at the operative language and see if you spot the ambiguity relied upon by the dissenting justices. I have added the bolded highlight:
The governor may issue an executive order declaring a state of emergency for the state or any portion of the state if he or she determines that an emergency resulting from a disaster or the imminent threat of a disaster exists. If the governor determines that a public health emergency exists, he or she may issue an executive order declaring a state of emergency related to public health for the state or any portion of the state and may designate the department of health services as the lead state agency to respond to that emergency. If the governor determines that the emergency is related to computer or telecommunication systems, he or she may designate the department of administration as the lead agency to respond to that emergency. A state of emergency shall not exceed 60 days, unless the state of emergency is extended by joint resolution of the legislature. A copy of the executive order shall be filed with the secretary of state. The executive order may be revoked at the discretion of either the governor by executive order or the legislature by joint resolution.
This is a standard provision for states adopting the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (“MSEHPA”). The 2002 model law was controversial due to the unilateral authority given to governors. I was one of those who wrote and opposed such provisions as dangerous concentrations of authority. That model law allowed governors to unilaterally renew such declarations — a provision that I and some others specifically criticized.
Wisconsin is one of the states the heeded the criticism and refused to adopt MSEHPA’s provision allowing for the public health emergency declaration to be unilaterally renewed every 30 days. MSEHPA § 405(b). Instead, it retained its prior time limitations on emergency orders. 2001 Wis. Act 109, § 340L.
The record therefore would seem abundantly clear in both its language and its statutory history. However, in dissent, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote that the court should allow for a more fluid reading in light of the pandemic: “This is no run-of-the-mill case. We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic … with the stakes so high, the majority not only arrives at erroneous conclusions, but it also obscures the consequence of its decision.” Bradley relies on the interpretation of a word “occurrence” that does not even appear in the operative provision while allowing the ends to drive the means on the interpretation. The dissenting justices adopt an artificial construct to claim that this is not one emergency but a series of ongoing emergencies even though they are all based on Covid-19. In this way, they suggest that a governor could just daisy-chain declarations by pretending that each insular pandemic concern is another emergency. Indeed, the worsening of a pandemic was viewed as a new “occurrence”:
Unlike Order #72, which was premised on preparing Wisconsin for the fight against COVID-19, Order #82 declared a new public health emergency in response to a “new and concerning spike in infections” that without quick intervention “will lead to unnecessary serious illness or death, overwhelm our healthcare system, prevent schools from fully reopening, and unnecessarily undermine economic stability . . . .” Order #82 detailed that “on June 1, 2020, there were 18,543 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Wisconsin; on July 1, 2020, there were 29,199 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a 57 percent increase from June 1; and on July 29, 2020, there were 51,049 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a 75 percent increase from July 1.” ¶118 Accordingly, Order #82 was issued in response to a specific and discrete occurrence.
That reasoning would effectively (and judicially) negate the express limitation of a 60-day rule under the law.
Rather than insisting on an objective and detached reading of the law, the dissenting justices repeatedly return to the specter of the pandemic and the need for a single figure in control: “the ultimate consequence of the majority’s decision is that it places yet another roadblock to an effective governmental response to COVID-19, further jeopardizing the health and lives of the people of Wisconsin.”
The dissenting opinion adopted an interpretative approach that allowed for a judicial reconstruction of the law to support the governor’s claim of sweeping authority. You can read the opinion for yourself but I found the dissenting opinion to be strikingly and dangerously detached from the express language of the law.
Here is the opinion: Fabick v. Evers
Fauci: “People should not be walking around wearing masks.”
“OR”
Powers are reserved to the people.
Powers not delegated to government are reserved to the people OR to the states, or to the states OR to the people.
The U.S., states, counties or municipalities have no legal basis and no authority to order any acts of personal healthcare.
States were not provided the power of tyranny over people.
The singular American failure since 1860 has been and is the corrupted judicial branch with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Marbury v Madison established the power of “judicial review” and the Supreme Court has not exercised that power, to support the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution, which it is sworn to do, since 1860.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dictionary.com
or
conjunction
(used to connect words, phrases, or clauses representing alternatives): books or magazines; to be or not to be.
(used to connect alternative terms for the same thing): the Hawaiian, or Sandwich, Islands.
_______________________________________________________________________
10th Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
“Total flu deaths suspiciously dropped to zero for the 2020-2021 flu season.”
We don’t hear much in the news about the tens of thousands of people dying each year from the flu, so most of us don’t realize how deadly it is. As shown in the chart below, total annual worldwide flu deaths consistently exceeded 50,000 people in 2017, 2018 and again in 2019, but strangely dropped to zero starting in early 2020 and have remained there ever since. (Source: World Health Organization)
There was another big spike during the 2019-2020 flu season with over 50,000 deaths, but then it dropped all the way to zero during the 2020-2021 flu season, which I find interesting because early 2020 is when the first significant numbers of COVID-19 deaths were reported. Never before in the history of flu reporting (started in 1995) has it ever dropped to zero, but suddenly and without any explanation it happened at the same time as COVID-19 deaths started ramping up. And the data clearly shows flu deaths had been increasing at an alarming rate over the past decade, so how could it have suddenly dropped to zero?
Doesn’t this look suspicious? Are we being lied to with phony COVID-19 death totals, purposely inflated to strike fear in us? This is just one of many facts revealing why I believe the answer is ABSOLUTELY YES.
– James Bailey, Z3 News https://z3news.com/w/total-flu-deaths-suspiciously-dropped-2020-2021/
This is misleading. The reason flu deaths are down is because 1) People are wearing masks and washing their hands and social distancing therefore making flu less likely than usual to spread 2) More than 15 million more people this year got flu shots than usual, which leads to less people getting flu.
“which leads to less people getting flu”
Was there something about “strangely dropped to zero” that eluded you?
Big difference between “less” and “zero”.
Go try to sell that Snake Oil elsewhere.
https://banned.video/watch?id=606650a852da0277d1dd7c1a
For statists, like the WI governor, there is nothing so permanent as a “temporary” emergency.
The ruling notes it is the law, not what is prudent that controls. What is not being said is the fact that the two houses of the State did not extend the emergency. they could have easily done the very easily if so chosen. While I agree the Governor was wise, it was not legal. Whether this helps or hurts remains to the future. What does bode well is the rule of law is in effect and remains so.
Who cares? The Governor wanted to prevent people from dying. Asking people to wear masks is hardly overreaching authority. Plus, people can ignore it if they want. The real issue was wearing a mask inside a business or market and those standards were more set by the owners of the business than the government. Get over this idea that the left wants to oppress you. If you want to drive 70 in a 35 mile an hour zone go for it. If you kill someone just use the freedom defense. America!
“Asking people to wear masks is hardly overreaching authority.”
“Asking” is one thing. Mandating that people wear masks is quite another.
“Get over this idea that the left wants to oppress you.”
Statists want to oppress people by forcing people in to doing what the State wants them to do. There are plenty of statists on the left and the right in this country.
Statism is the enemy of sovereign individuals. Which is why the Founders spelled that out very clearly in the Declaration and the Constitution.
How the Coronavirus Took Over the World
The lexicon of mendacious government platitudes has gained another ignominious entry. “Just three weeks to flatten the curve!” they implored one long year ago. Yet after twelve months of authoritarianism and state-enforced solitude, SWAT teams are swooping in to arrest Miami spring break revelers, and lockdown protests from Amsterdam to Kassel are intensifying across Europe. The much-vaunted vaccines seem to have brought us no closer to freedom. The initial justifications for the suspension of liberty will now undoubtedly rank in history alongside such inglorious slogans as “the troops will be home by Christmas” and “diversity is our strength.” Debates continue to rage about the lethality and the origin of the coronavirus, but in truth, these are largely academic discussions now. The coronavirus is not primarily an epidemiological phenomenon, but rather a sociological and political one. Our question should not be “why has this pandemic happened now,” but rather “why have governments and societies responded to it as they did?”
The truth may be that the coronavirus did not blink into existence in Wuhan one year ago. Rather, it had been incubating in the psyche of modern societies for years. The ease with which populations not only acquiesced to governmental restrictions but also wilfully demanded more of them is proof that we had already accepted the premise of the coronavirus lockdowns into our hearts long ago. It is worth noting that almost all the trends and changes that the coronavirus has seemingly unleashed are simply an acceleration of what was preexisting: Atomization, a retreat from the physical world into the digital, a neurotic collective hysteria in the face of death without a spiritual framework, the expectation that the government will provide, a pseudo-religious belief in experts and scientific redemption, and the hyper-politicization of communal activity.
In examining the coronavirus as a social display rather than as a deadly viral outbreak, it is useful to identify who has consistently resisted the lockdown. Primarily, religious communities within the West have continued their lives largely unhindered. Only a few weeks ago, the Orthodox Jewish stronghold of Stamford Hill in London had the highest rate of coronavirus in the UK. Likewise, there have been several high-profile cases of Indian and Pakistani weddings and religious festivals being broken up; and it has not gone unnoticed that cities such as Bradford and Leicester with large ethnic minority populations had disproportionately high Covid-rates. It is popular on the Right to point to this as an example of the failure of multiculturalism, highlighting as it does that immigrant communities do not abide by the laws of the land, and that governments are too timid to enforce them in any case fearing accusations of racism. These points are, of course, true. But this also perhaps says more about Western host societies than it does about those who have chosen to migrate to them.
Handwringing liberals may attribute this difference in ethnic attitudes to the coronavirus to a lack of education and resources, or our insensitivity to alternative cultural values. Translated, this simply means that Jewish, Hindu, and Islamic communities have not been morally intimidated by a disease with a median death rate in most cases beyond the average life expectancy; and they also have been unimpressed by the potential for social ostracization if they do not comply. Of course, this may be because they are beyond public reproach in the West, but their response has nevertheless been a perennial, rather than a modern one. Armored by faith, they have taken a divinely fatalistic view and chosen to continue to celebrate the cycle of life and death — weddings, births, funerals, and birthdays.
The shrill cries of moral indignation about the selfishness of killing grandma have much less weight if you have already accepted that your grandparents will die and so will you.
In a world riven by suffering and temporal chaos, they have opted to make meaningful lives, rather than to potentially live just that little bit longer in the self-imposed cryostasis of Western societies.
As these religious groupings continue their surreptitious gatherings in the Mosque or Synagogue, hermit Brits dared to leave their womb-like hiding spots to gormlessly clap the NHS in a pseudo-religious act of worship. Without a metaphysical basis, only the quantity rather than the quality of life has any value, and if nurses and doctors are the high priests of this new religion, then they should rightfully be venerated and doted on. The transition from a government of oligarchic middle-managers to total domination by an unelected scientific cabal was really not that drastic when politics had already been reduced to nothing more than a rationalistic and utilitarian problem-solving exercise. The only thing that political parties seem to disagree on is if the restrictions are tough enough, and if the logistics of policing and vaccination have been sufficiently draconian. No philosophical examinations of the objectives of the lockdown are permitted, but then this is unsurprising in societies that also do not allow the questioning of the sacred cows of demographic replacement, foreign policy misadventures, or the cult of LGBTQ+ rights. The population had already been cowed and pre-programmed to accept new doctrines without question by years of the repression of free speech and independent thought.
This does not, however, mean that the lockdown is unpopular. If there were to be a democratic vote on it, it is likely in many Western countries it would be sustained well into the future, perhaps even indefinitely. In Japan, huge segments of the population have withdrawn from society entirely, living their lives in their bedrooms, supported by their parents or the state, living in a condition of total social shame, arrested development, and hedonistic consumption. The term for this is hikikomori. What at first sight may seem an anomaly of Japanese culture is in fact a glimpse into the future of modern society. We are all hikikomori now. A significant portion of people is in no rush to return to “normality” because normality for them was simply social isolation and alienation with additional demands placed upon them. What does the outside world offer to these people anymore? The answer for an increasing number is soulless, unnecessary, and unfulfilling corporate jobs in an atomized world where no one around you looks like you, set amid the backdrop of interchangeable towns and cities.
Sweden is perhaps the most advanced case of this terminal decay of modernity, yet it had the lightest lockdown restrictions in Europe. This at first seems paradoxical, yet in many ways, it only bolsters the analysis. With its huge migrant population that for reasons outlined earlier would not respect any restrictions, and with its completely atomized and self-censoring society in which nearly 40% of people live alone, formal legal restrictions were perhaps thought to be unnecessary when the vast majority of the population would self-police following the Jantelagen, and the migrant communities would never be compelled to obey anyway.
All of this illustrates one fundamental realization: the incentive structures of Western societies have drastically changed over the past few decades. Wealth acquisition, passing on your genes to the next generation, and gaining social standing in the local community have been replaced by virtue-signaling and climbing the ladder of social clout in the global, digital community. We live online. Our community is our Twitter feed, our gaming group, our curated Instagram photos. This is not a particularly original or compelling assessment by itself, but we must also understand that the nature of digital life has changed. Where once social media was pitched as a medium to connect with and keep in touch with real-world friends, it is now a vehicle for conformity, groupthink, and passivity. This is underscored by one subtle, but very important change in the language of social relations. No longer are others friends as they were at the dawn of social media, but are instead now merely followers.
Online social interaction has ceased to be bi-directional and reciprocal; it is that of the devotee and the cult leader. It is a slave and master mentality. It is therefore unlikely a sudden revolt against the popular consensus will spring from those who even in their private online domain are passive cheerleaders. The fact is the physical world has lost its grip over the modern imagination. Going out to earn a living is an almost archaic activity when we are inching towards states so all-encompassing that they will provide a universal basic income driven by fiat money printing. The rise of Bitcoin is a reaction to the feeling that our economies are a giant fiction, running up debts that are never intended to be repaid, presided over by a handful of oligarchs with more wealth than we could ever even imagine. Under these conditions, heading outside and into the office seems terribly outmoded. Likewise, in the digital age, sex has been relegated to a solo activity as pornography supplants procreation for the OnlyFans generation. In the West, there are fewer and fewer communal anchors as pubs and churches close. All of this contributes to the feeling that there is nothing out there in the world of any value, and so the loss of the freedom to go outside and to associate for many has been more an inconvenience than a matter of life and death.
Mortality salience does, however, play a huge role in the current crisis.
Preying on health fears to instill compliance with governmental policy has proven so wildly successful precisely because the population is already so primed to believe that it is at risk. This is because it is. An obese, aging, mentally- and chronically-ill populace is already well versed with an internalized fear of their own incapacitation and demise. Playing on that is the perfect PR strategy, one that would have been inconceivable in a strong and virile society.
All of these factors have contributed to how the coronavirus took over the world, and collectively, they spell a long winter for human liberty. The freedoms we have lost may possibly be incrementally restored in the coming months and years, but we have shown ourselves amply willing to abandon our rights and painstakingly slow to ask for them back. There is no reason to believe an event like the coronavirus could not happen again. We live in an era of chronic rather than acute politics where narratives linger on for months and years. The underlying cultural and societal malaise, the collective neurosis, and the spiritual death of vast swathes of the West will not quickly be reversed.
Our only recourse is to begin to re-root ourselves in a Heideggerian authentic life, to seek out like-minded individuals, and to build robust and resilient communities that can thrive in this bleak existential landscape. As others live their lives in stasis, we must instead embrace reality with vigor — and work to take it back.
Wear a mask in my church or I’ll cut a far_ at your home perch.
And why did the minority judges contort themselves to defend a rogue governor? Because this is really about 2022 and every election after that. 2020 was just the trial run. Democrat officials plan to declare many “emergencies” in 2022. Let me see, there’s the emergency of white supremacy. Or there’s the emergency of electoral unfairness. Or the emergency of white insurrection. The Democrats have a veritable buffet of hysterias on which they can build a one-party state. How long before Democrat apparatchiks suspend habeas corpus to combat “hooliganism?”
Am I joking? Is D.C. not an armed camp?
Republican legislatures and certain black robes in Washington need to grow a spine before we become slaves to emergency decrees.
Diogenes, I don’t think those on the left are listening. They have been programmed to ban and hide contrary views. Your point is correct…” before we become slaves”.
“I don’t think those on the left are listening.”
They are the reason Diogenes is a member of the school of Cynicism.
Another symptom of the Balkanization in the US and gives leftists another reason to hate us.
You can usually tell one’s world view by how they discuss or approach the virus:
– wears a mask alone when jogging – LEFTIST
– wears a mask alone while in their car or walking – LEFTIST
– wears a mask when with their significant other – LEFTIST
– snitches on their neighbors for having too many over at an event – LEFTIST
– doxxes a neighbor for expressing a “wrong opinion” about the virus – LEFTIST
If the US were a couple a divorce would have occurred long ago.
antonio
there is no “roadblock to an effective governmental response”. There is a state legislature that is empowered by law and has the means to formulate a governmental response. And they said Trump was a threat to democracy……
Another thing really concerning about the dissenting opinion is its’ focus on standing, as if the citizens of Wisconsin should never have been allowed to challenge the issue in court!
“That reasoning would effectively (and judicially) negate the express limitation of a 60-day rule under the law.
Rather than insisting on an objective and detached reading of the law, the dissenting justices repeatedly return to the specter of the pandemic and the need for a single figure in control: “the ultimate consequence of the majority’s decision is that it places yet another roadblock to an effective governmental response to COVID-19, further jeopardizing the health and lives of the people of Wisconsin.”
**********************************
Legal conclusion: The Left’s apparatchik judges lie repeatedly, unashamedly and expediently. They are hence incredible as a matter of law.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” __Lord Acton
Oh and the Acton kicker somehow always forgotten: “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
Thanks for the additional words..
Seems to me like existing law is not sufficient to deal with the nature of the pandemic(s). It misses the boat on whether Covid 19 variants are of the same emergency. And it — widely — misses the mark on what the true effects of misinformation from the top were, as clearly and demonstrably happened under trump. Granted, abuse of emergency powers is a slippery slope, but so is politicization of a pandemic. And, as usual, western culture and society is notoriously bound by its tendency to fall prey to divide and conquer black and white thinking while not being able to get its hands around dealing with every aspect of a phenomenon that exists on several levels concurrently (ex. issues of addiction, gun violence, homelessness etc).
Either way, whether due to the medical reality that Covid is poised for an uptick due to not being able to vaccinate quickly enough to beat out the variants, or whether, statistically speaking, the chart formation of new cases shows nature’s tendency to test or excede the last high after a sizable downturn, we are at a crucial moment. The politicization of a pandemic is just plain stupid. It’s stupid standing right up next to the map. It’s stupid standing twenty feet away from the map. Justifying what happened according to existing law is a ‘switching seats on the titanic’ argument, JT.
EB
Abuse of emergency powers is politicizing the pandemic.
So is just the politicizing the pandemic through stupidity, umm, I mean trump lack of policy.
EB
“The politicization of a pandemic is just plain stupid.”
Bug, that is absolutely correct but I am sure that we disagree on all the rest that follows.
One can tell when things are being politicized when one side tries to prevent the other side from speaking.
The testimony from Peter McCullough explains that treatments of Covid were censored causing many deaths. Doctors all over the world have used a multiplicity of treatments are felt to have added value when we were told go home and wait (sometimes to die) for big pharma to produce their profitable treatments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=QAHi3lX3oGM&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR30cGeRlSaXzfsBsk3Gx7ke7DwaPkp6VVclcdVNqRVNeFgzCzyO-GT5tmU
“I refused to let a patient to languish at home with no treatment and then be hospitalized too late.”
“a near total block of information to treat patients”
At first I looked at this because I know a Dr. Peter McCullough. Different one. Ha.
I actually agree with much of what he says. Covid has been a perfect storm that, among other things, shines a light on the devastating weakness of the American health care system that can fit under the heading of its reliance entirely on presentation of overt symptoms. There is *much* that can be done between nothing and hospitalization. It’s not just Covid where this is the case. The fact absence of symptom is the guideline to what entails healing is the bane of existence for every funcitonal disorder, and the fact that everything is based on symptoms getting bad enough to entail hospital admission is a travesty whether it be Covid, heart disease, cancer or whatever…
I’d add to the doctor’s observations that the biggest blown opportunity in treatment of Covid, in the initial stages: the complete lack of working with Chinese doctors who’d dealt with Covid in China. In terms of efficacy, that was a complete no brainer. And bascically a wildly missed opportunity.
EB
“I actually agree with much of what he says.”
Bug, what he said was important. If he is correct, perhaps tens of thousands of Americans died needlessly.
” its reliance entirely on presentation of overt symptoms.”
That is not so. In fact the US system relies more on preventative care procedures than probably any other western nation.
“There is *much* that can be done between nothing and hospitalization”
That is a winner of a statement that is clear and I believe absolutely true.
A lot is missing in all healthcare systems. What preventive measures are you talking about that are not being taken because the physician doesn’t address them? The guiding force behind what is paid for and what is not so happens to be Medicare which is a government agency. Are you faulting Medicare? In your list of things can you give us an idea of the tradeoffs that will be involved?
“That is not so. In fact the US system relies more on preventative care procedures than probably any other western nation.”
True in the eyes of ‘conventional’ medicine itself. Not nearly as preventative of the funcitonal disorder rather than focus on acute emergency medicine. Taking bigger steps toward prevention, but not as advanced as, say, TCM. It’s the reason why many hospitals in China blend the two approaches. Also some in Germany and France..
Right now, the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has over healthcare in the States provides serious diagnostic limitations.
EB
“Taking bigger steps toward prevention, but not as advanced as, say, TCM. It’s the reason why many hospitals in China blend the two approaches. “
Bug, you apparently have never been in a Chinese Hospital.
One has to have an M.D. or D.O license to do the full gambit of issues where medical licensure is necessary. In other words you want our best neurosurgeon to spend time showing people how to wear bicycle helmets rather than doing neuro-surgery. He would likely do an excellent job but a non licensed person could do that while he is in the operating room.
Explain what you think the licensed and practicing M.D. should be doing regarding prevention that a non M.D. can’t do. I think you will get stuck trying to add meat to your comments. You have a lot to say until we get to the specifics.
“Explain what you think the licensed and practicing M.D. should be doing regarding prevention that a non M.D. can’t do.”
Not sure you said what you meant to here.
If you meant instead: what can’t a licensed and practicing M.D do that a non M.D. can? If that’s the case, it’s a hugely generalized question because there’s a gigantic range of non M.D. practitioners, many of them suffering under the thumb of a medical industry that specializes in kicking the door shut on the next group trying to get through the door, protection and stilted capitalism at its best! Ha…
But I’ll go with what I think you meant to ask and answer it this way: licensed and practicing M.D.’s aren’t required to learn the pulse and tongue and hara diagnosis that is standard fare in TCM and Ayurvedic, Japanese and French acupuncture. Why is this important? Because pulse diagnosis is far superior to laboratory testing when it comes to early and preventative diagnostics as well as sensing when ‘side effects’ are setting in.
And then take a leap over into the related herbal medicine that goes along with pulse and tongue diagnostics…, the pharmaceutical realm has serious objections to studying multiple compounds so is really slow at studying herbs and their effects whereas in TCM the hands on research is thousands of years old. This is good in some ways but not others. The pharma realm sees herbs as competitors to drug medicine when the herbals are really not in that realm. They’re between food and medicine whereas pharma won’t look at it as such…mainly because it threatens their market control were it to become more mainstream. (This is where some Chinese hospitals shine…, they’re not bogged down in what amounts to a language war between disciplines and show no hesitation in working the best of pharma with the best of herbs or with, say, using acupuncture for anethesia effects during more allopathic type surgeries).
Now I know you’re going to argue with me and call me stupid so I’ll stop here, but I could go on.
EB
“And then take a leap over into the related herbal medicine that goes along with pulse and tongue diagnostics”
Firstly let’s look at the Covid situation of today. A lot of the dispute centered around the pharmaceutical realm and cutting into their revenue stream.
When low tech ideas were introduced into the blogosphere the ideas were erased and some of the physicians cancelled. What you are calling for in one realm was denied in the Covid realm because of politics. Take a renewed look at how twitter and facebook cancelled potentially life saving information.
“And then take a leap over into the related herbal medicine that goes along with pulse and tongue diagnostics”
Secondly, the two biggest killers that concern physicians are cardiac disease and cancer. Prove your case with “pulse diagnosis” and herbs.
Let’s hear a comparison in the two most important areas of those two techniques. No one is calling you stupid for your out of the box thinking despite the fact that you and a lot of others called Trump stupid for his out of the box thinking.
Now , Bug, it is time for ‘Where’s the meat’ in your suggestions. I welcome that with open arms. Let the discussion begin.
I can’t “prove” my case to someone who has as little experience as you. Pulse and tongue diagnosis is as much art as it is science. I’ll never be able to overcome your hostile preconceptions, nor should I have to on a keyboard jockey blog comment section, let alone one where the primary mode of discussion is to begin by arguing in bad faith and then descending from there.
In short, it’s a total waste of time. Life your life like you want to. Study the things you want to. It’s okay for you to do it (at leasst currently).
And newsflash Allan, you often call people stupid on this blog. i believe I’ve heard more than a hefty dose of “Anonymous the Stupid” frothing at the mouth coming from you here.
EB
Yes, Anonymous the Stupid is Stupid. Look at his way of acting.
I didn’t see this post before my last response.
“Pulse and tongue diagnosis is as much art as it is science. I’ll never be able to overcome your hostile preconceptions”
What you are saying is that you recognize I know a lot more than you initially thought. The problem is that you do not know what integrated medicine is. I will forget the insults assuming you initially were serious about the discussion.
I got down to the specifics and that made you uncomfortable so you blamed me. You realize that in many cancer centers acupuncture is being used. (I am not commenting on its success or lack of success, only the reality of things that exist presently). Do your realize that the pharmaceutical companies scour the earth for herbs and plants because many medications are derived from them. Being a man and likely elderly you must have heard of saw grass palmetto and you might be on a medication that is trying to augment its effects. Historically most people think of the drug Digoxin used to treat heart disease but there are other drugs like aspirin and quinine along with a vast number of others.
Do you get my point? The separation is not as great as you think. Medicine adopts a lot from the world outside and uses it. That is part of western medicine.
The pharmaceutical companies make money off of selling drugs. Money is the incentive and incentives are two edged swords. You were touching on that in your initial response so I was willing to pursue a common idea with you instead of getting into an insult match. I am still willing.
You were talking about out of the box thinking. That is what Trump did and was viciously attacked for. That is what many super docs did as well (professors that had well established reputations). Their peer reviewed articles were banned and they were cancelled.
One is either open to alternative ideas like you seemed to be or not open. You determine what you are.
There are some things from TCM that are for real like acupuncture which is proven as a treatment for various problems. Much common sense in it too.
But then there is a whole host of stuff that is pure superstition, and hucksterism.
Some of it is not fake, it is just cultural. It is meaningful and helpful to them, but if you have not grown up in it, it’s just incomprehensible. Untranslatable to us. That’s my take on TCM.
Sal Sar
“Right now, the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has over healthcare in the States provides serious diagnostic limitations.”
I do agree with that. A lot of what we have seen in the response to COVID appears, in retrospect, to have had as much of an economic motivation as a thereapeutic one
When it comes to public health, one risk should not become the subject of tunnel vision such that all relatively important public health risks are forgotten.
I’m afraid we have seen a lot of that the past year. But big pharma is making the money so ya know good for them.
Sal Sar
Word, Sal. The way I look at it is that, yes, pharma is experiencing salad days with Covid on the one hand, but treatment and prevention of infectious disease is squarely within the wheelhouse of western medicine. The initial treatment, I mean. Where pharma will overstep is not the vaccine realm or acute treatment but rather in their stunning systemic lack in looking at lack of overt symptom as being equal to ‘cure’ when there is whole long road to travel from that point on. Granted your average victim/sufferer really wants that abreviated look at things to be the truth. Sickness, disease and healing is just a lot of work and most of us are just too caught up in trying to survive to go all in on it.
EB
S. Meyer,
“In fact the US system relies more on preventative care procedures than probably any other western nation.”
I would dispute this, to a degree. My vitamin D levels were not checked at my yearly “wellness” exam. Got my cholesterol checked but not vitamin D. Having optimal D levels is pretty preventative, so would getting a decent check of magnesium and zinc levels (not a serum check for the Mg, especially, though!).
Prairie, you have drawn a conclusion based on the fact that your vitamin D levels weren’t checked? Mine were and most of the people I know have had their vitamin D levels checked.
Check out western nations and see how frequently vitamin D is tested. Then check out the frequency of colonoscopy, pap smears etc. Anecdotal evidence is not impressive.
There is a trade off involved. There is a cost to checking a vit D level and that means somewhere the cost of Viet D levels is being paid for. Maybe for a certain population group that will mean there is no stop sign where children are crossing the street.
I believe in testing vit D levels because those levels are falling with people staying indoors more and wearing sunscreen when they go out.
By the way vit D levels are out there for everyone that is willing to pay for it.
I agree with the criticisms of the American system, but I’m not sure what could have been gleaned from China. Seems like a good idea, but easier to imagine than accomplish.
First of all, it’s a long way away and there’s not much collegiality. I mean, Hong Kong, yes, especially because you still have a number of English speakers in that community, but not mainland. It seems that the “virologist community” was very tight with Western counterparts, but not regular doctors.
Secondly, I have heard some really kooky stuff from Chinese doctors. I mean, when it comes to Traditional Chinese medicine, a lot of that is just pure mixin, ie, superstition. It’s not clear when somebody says they are a doctor, um, are they truly credentialed or what? Qigong is not medicine in my thinking. I mean, stuff that works, like acupuncture for pain, ok, it’s proven. But some of the TCM beliefs are just totally untranslateable to us. Stuff like you are sick and the cause is an “excess of humidity” in the body. What? What is that supposed to mean? It means something to them but to us, ha, just impossible to understand and not proven by scientific standards as we reckon them. I’m trying to be respectful here, because there is some chicken soup style common sense to it, but parsing it would be difficult for anyone who tried.
Then the Western style doctors, over there, lets think about them. Im not sure how many they have that are credentialed in a way that we would could verify. Sometimes perhaps, If they are well trained, I suspect, they have been in the West, and often stayed here. We have numerous PRC docs out here in flyover now. They run a distant second compared to an abundance of Pakistanis, but they are here. So some come here, train here, and stay here.
So I get the impression not a lot of them are training in the West and then going home to PRC. And if they are, they are probably top drawer, highly in demand by the nomenklatura. The guanxi is holding on to them tightly and keeping them busy. They’re not going to be wasting time talking to Westerners especially about a politically sensitive topic.
PRC is not a repressive regime for the average Chinese person I think, but, that is conditional on them staying out of politics. If they wade into politics, that is a different ball of wax. And the COVID was from the start, a fraught subject permeated by dangerous political considerations.
I think it still is, even for us. But I suspect, even more so for them. So, what would be the upside to giving laowei doctors free advice about COVID? How would it have been done, who woujld have listened, and whether it would have been worth it for them at all to waste their time?
See what I mean? It’s a big country, and as Americans, we often have no clue what the devil is going on over there. I think a lot of people over there, have no clue what’s happening there either. From one region to the next, it’s a very different situation. A place like Shanghai is Westernized in a thousand ways that a big city in the interior is not. The interior is, much as it has been in the past, remote and inaccessible to us from afar. Sal Sar
Lots of good stuff in what you’re saying here, Sal. I’ll just take a stab at one of your concerns….dampness (or as you say ‘humidity’) is seen as an invader and roughly translates in western terms to a sluggish lymphatic system. Combine it with one of the other invaders, say, ‘heat’ and we’re taking asskicking fungual infection. Damp heat would be foundational in immune disorders such as AIDS. Much work being done in the last couple of decades of how to mix and match eastern and western views of anatomy and physiology, I’ll just say that. Dig that you’re willing to venture in though…
EB
Won’t argue with some really kooky stuff that’s been allowed to survive in TCM nomenclature though…add to that some really brutal elements of the herbal branch that has led to decimation of several species because brutal and final products kill off large number of animals. Not a reason to overthrow the whole philosophy however.
EB
The fact that the dissenters utilize the number of cases so inaccurately to justify their dissent is disturbing. It reflects not only their willingness to use facts to manipulate the law but their inability to use logic to deduce facts. It also shows that they are acting politically. We should all be disturbed.
Hearing of these attacks on our liberties coming constantly from state legislature after state legislature is enough to really discourage a guy. This coming from a citizen of Alabama, which while not a leftist dominated state, still finds a way to tell its citizens what it can and can not do. It sometimes feels like living in Saudi Arabia! The thing that gives me hope is that I think people are beginning to lash out — see Second Amendment Sanctuary Cities in response to the Virginia gun laws, for instance. Still, I think the vast majority of citizens are ignorant at best, apathetic at worst, about the actions of their state governments.
To rule by decree is by definition to dictate, an anti-democratic mode of governing. The Romans understood this, which is why they celebrated Cincinnatus, who resigned his first dictatorship after sixteen days, an action which earned him praise for both his ability as a general and his virtue as a citizen.
I wonder who will praise Evers and other governors who hve clung to their decree powers for more than a year. Perhaps the small business owners who have been bankrupted, or the unemployed whose lives have been ruined? If not, surely the dissenting judges and many others who have been able to work from home and conduct their business on line, safe from the virus and the vulgar mob, as the plebians of the gig economy brought them food, drink, and other fantastic things.
Cincinnatus is a personal hero. One legend from the end of his life claims Roman consul Marcus Capitolinus defended one of Cincinnatus’ sons from a charge of military incompetence by asking the jury who would go to tell the aged Cincinnatus the news in the event of a conviction. The son was said to have been acquitted because the jury could not bring itself to break the old man’s heart. That’s respect.
What is it about Lefties and their desire to control everyone?
Scary people.
“This is no run-of-the-mill case. We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic … with the stakes so high, the majority not only arrives at erroneous conclusions, but it also obscures the consequence of its decision.” Who is she to decide an “erroneous conclusion”? To me this is the epitome of “white privilege”.
j:
“White privilege” isn’t an argument; its an insult. The argument is the judge is utilizing “end justifies the means” logic in an environment where process and precedent are meant to avoid this ruminations of the panic stricken and pay heed to the written word. Color has nothing to do with this kind of bad thinking unless of course you’re a Frankfurt School graduate and see socialism as the way forward.
@mespo727272
Didn’t Comrade Lenin say that you have to break some eggs to make an omelet? Leftists always believe the ends justifies the means. Anything is fair when fighting evil fascists. Read the Antifa – The Anti-Fascist Handhook by Mark Bray. Of course, their definition of fascist is quite broad.
antonio
mc:
“What is it about Lefties and their desire to control everyone?”
*********************************
Delusions of grandeur, lack of historical knowledge, busibodiness, arrogance … it’s a long list.
@monumentcoloarado
It is for their own good! Didn’t you know this? Ordinary people are too stupid to know what is in their best interests and need their moral and intellectual bettors to make these decisions. You must be a “nazi” too.
antonio
North Carolina has a Council of State form of government which requires the Governor to consult with the Council re major decisions but the Democrat Governor ignored the Council by a clever and arrogant ploy during his numerous Executive Orders re Covid.
What these Governors and Democrat Justices seem to ignore is all the Government actions must be done in accordance with existing LAW.
If the Governor is wanting to take the right action….in the Wisconsin case….sixty days seems a reasonable time for the Governor to convince the Legislature of that and for the Legislature to approve the Governor’s actions.
We are seeing a laundry list of States finding their Governor’s acting well in excess of the powers granted them by LAW.
The cold hard facts are clear….so why is it so hard for folks to accept that despite the Governor having the power to take initial action by Executive Order there is a limit to that power that must be then transferred to the various state’s legislature.
Or in the case of North Carolina with the Council of State system…..to the Council or Legislature as required by LAW.
Each instance it is a Democrat that gets reminded of the limits imposed by State LAW by a Court.
(The word Law is emphasized by the capitalization to read LAW)
That dissenting “logic” has to create some feelings of dread about the future of this constitutional republic and the rule of law