Good morning C&C readers! Today’s news roundup includes: a surprising article from the Wall Street Journal explaining how to take vaccine cards; the House votes to fix the problem; Psaki doubles down on jabbing everybody; UK reports more Omicron; UK sees a long horizon for mitigation; Ireland locks down harder; Biden eats the frog; Florida sues the Department of Homeland Security in federal court; Fauci tells Neil Cavuto he understand why people don’t trust him; Some countries have figured out how to keep Pfizer away; Judge Rogers reconsiders and re-denies Florida’s injunction request; and CMS stops enforcing its mandate. For now.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday headlined, “How the NFL Ruled Antonio Brown’s Vaccine Card Was Forged—and Why It’s Difficult for Employers to Prove.” The story is about how the NFL determined that Brown’s card wasn’t authentic, but it almost seems like a primer on how to beat the system.

The thrust of the article is that “it’s actually quite difficult in the U.S. to determine whether someone’s paper vaccination record is authentic.” Absent glaring signs of forgery, like “obvious typos in the official imprints, suggesting the card is a bad copy, or vaccine dates not adding up or handwritten entries that purport to be several weeks apart but clearly came from the same hand,” there is no practical way for an employer to confirm whether a card is genuine. The one item that an employer can check is the vaccine lot number shown on the card, but if that lot number checks out, that’s about all they can verify.

“For now, a lot of the system runs on trust and hope,” said Noel Brewer, a UNC professor specializing in public health. For now.

In Florida, employers can’t check with the state to confirm that someone got the shots. “We [only] provide proof of immunization to the person the record belongs to. We wouldn’t give the record to an employer,” said Kevin Watler, with the Hillsborough County office of Florida’s DOH.

According the Journal, the three Bucs players who were suspended for having fake cards were determined to have forged them because they all showed the same remote clinic location and the same exact date of visit: “when the league searched all the team’s cards [it found] that two other teammates had vaccination cards from the same unlikely place on that same day.”

The WSJ observed sadly that there is no single database of vaccinations, and, according to the Journal, such a database “has long been a touchy political matter.” Just six months ago, the White House insisted that it wasn’t the role of the federal government to track that information. How times change!

I wonder why the WSJ wrote this article. Why help injection avoiders game the system with all this information. Oh, wait a minute! Something else is going on …

🔥 Yesterday, 80 house Republicans joined all Democrats and voted to approve H.R. 550, which would greatly expand the CDC, increasing its budget by a half trillion dollars, and create a national vaccine database. Under the pretense of “database modernization,” the bill says it will add “a confidential, population-based, computerized database that records immunization doses administered by any health care provider to persons within the geographic area covered by that database.”

Well okay then! Now it’s clear that the WSJ was explaining the PROBLEM that the House bill would solve. It was just battlespace preparation for selling this giant expansion of public health power. See how it works? It’s terrible how employers can’t get at employees private health information when they need it, isn’t it? So we need a massive expansion of the CDC because it’s totally not political and it has done such a great job with everything else. You can trust them.

Democrat Ann Kuster (NH), who sponsored the bill, said the new injection tracking system would be used to “remind patients when they are due for a recommended vaccine” and “identify areas with low vaccination rates to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines.” Uh-huh.

The bill’s four Republican co-sponsors were: Larry Bucshon (R-IN), James Baird (R-IN), David McKinley (R-WV), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

Looks like we have some work to do. This HAS to be stopped in the Senate.

🔥 At the White House press conference yesterday, a reporter reminded Jen Psaki about Germany’s new law locking down uninjected people and then asked, what is the White House going to do about all the injection-hesitant people in the US? Psaki said, “We know that vaccinations are what can save lives … we know it works … [but] for reasons I can never begin to understand, some members of the Republican Party have decided that their political platform is going to be running in favor of protecting people from getting vaccinated … as crazy as that sounds … there are some forces against us.”

So.

🔥 The UK reported 75 new cases of the Omicron variant yesterday, bringing its total to 134. Articles about the development didn’t explain why that was a problem, exactly. Anyway, there was no word from the White House about any travel restrictions with the UK. Meanwhile, travel is with Africa is still locked down.

💉 According the UK Times, the British government’s Covid advisory group just said “Covid will be a threat to the NHS for at least the next five years and testing and vaccines may be needed for a decade or longer” and it will take “at least a further five years for Covid-19 to settle to a predictable endemic state.”

Testing for ten more years. TESTING.

Apparently the safe and effective injections aren’t living up to the job. The advisory group’s report explained that “repeated vaccination may be required to maintain sufficient vaccine-derived immunity for future Covid-19 control. It is a realistic possibility that, over the next five years, there will be epidemics of sufficient size to overwhelm health and care services.”

Overwhelmed hospitals! They’re back! Now, try to follow me here. Covid never overwhelmed British hospitals — even during the worst parts of the pandemic — before there were injections, therapies, monoclonal antibodies, and before we even knew much about the virus. But, now that over 80% of British people are injected, there is a “realistic possibility” that there will be MORE epidemics that will be SO MUCH WORSE than what we’ve seen before that they’ll “overwhelm health and care services.”

The report necessarily assumes that there is NO WAY to prepare for these alleged future epidemics by, say, I don’t know, hiring more doctors and nurses and increasing hospital capacity or anything. That’s how bad these future epidemics will be. There’s no amount of preparation that could head them off. The ONLY POSSIBLE solution is to keep buying these injections and making big pharma rich. It’s the only way.

What would we do without these experts? Science! SHUT UP.

🐸 The White House confirmed yesterday that Joe Biden is sick, but it is DEFINITELY NOT COVID. In fact, the White House physician released a letter formally diagnosing Biden with a “frog in his throat.” So that’s where it went. The doctor did not offer an opinion about how the amphibian was doing.

🔥 Florida sued the Biden Administration in federal court yesterday, asking for an order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to produce documents about its decision not to enforce certain immigration laws. According to allegations in the lawsuit, after Florida asked for the documents back in October, the DHS first invoked an emergency extension citing “unusual circumstances” requiring extra time. But then DHS blew through that deadline and has completely failed to provide the requested documents. For some reason.

🪳 Neil Cavuto interviewed Fauci yesterday. He asked if Fauci was troubled that many people who previously trusted him don’t trust him as much now. Fauci admitted, “I could understand how that’s the case … I understand how I could be the target of criticism … there really has been a considerable degree of politicization about this.”

Neil asked if Covid will become like the flu, requiring annual shots and stuff. Fauci didn’t answer that question, not directly. Instead, he replied, “I don’t think there’s a chance you’re going to eradicate this … we’ve only eradicated one virus in history, and that’s smallpox. … So what I’m thinking about is CONTROL. Namely a level of control that is well well better than where we are right now.”

Well, well, well.

That’s true, I suppose we could do a lot more CONTROL. Why not? It’s not like there are any ill effects from all these control measures or anything. Or, I don’t know, maybe we could just do what Florida is doing? It’s so hard to say which is better.

🔥 In 90%+ injected Ireland, they are closing bars, limiting table service at restaurants and re-imposing distancing requirements, and dropping to 50% capacity at large events. The country has also ordered that indoor events can include a maximum of only three households, and it is extending its injection passport law. Safe and effective! Effective at something. Just not what you thought it was.

💉 World Bank President David Malpass said in a Zoom presentation this week that “Pfizer has been hesitant to go into some of these countries because of the liability problems, they don’t have a liability shield.”

Um, I have a question. If the injections are completely safe and effective, why does Pfizer NEED a liability shield? Liability for WHAT?

It almost seems like Pfizer knows something that we don’t know. Weird.

🔥 After re-considering her previous order denying Florida’s injunction against the CMS Mandate, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers renewed her decision on Thursday to deny Florida’s injunction request, as I predicted. Going against the other two district judges who entered reasoned opinions finding the CMS Mandate was unlawful, Rodgers wrote in her Thursday order that the CMS Mandate “is not usurping the state’s police power to broadly regulate for the common good but instead has implemented a health precaution for the effective and efficient administration of the federal health care programs it is entrusted with administering.” Effective AND efficient.

Now, Florida has to decide whether to appeal the new denial order to the Eleventh Circuit, or rest on the Louisiana decision.

🔥 On Thursday, in light of all the great decisions in the CMS Mandate cases this week, CMS suspended enforcement of the jab requirement for healthcare workers. In a press release, the agency said “it has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of this rule pending future developments in the litigation. Accordingly, while these preliminary injunctions are in effect, surveyors must not survey providers for compliance with the requirements of the Interim Final Rule.”

So.

Have a terrific Saturday, have fun decorating and shopping, and I’ll catch up with you guys on Monday morning to kick the week off right with more tasty caffeine and a new roundup.

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