Posted on 01/31/2021 2:55:19 AM PST by Houmatt
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no longer restricted by the Trump administration, issued an extensive federal public health order late Friday requiring all individuals to wear masks over their mouth and nose on nearly all forms of public transportation and private ride-sharing services—and makes refusal to wear a face-covering a violation of federal law.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
peachy
Is there any reason to include the remark about the Trump administration other than spite?
Ask Forbes. They wrote the headline.
The CDC Has Less Power Than You Think, and Likes it That Way
There is no delegated power for this rule, it is unlawful.
By Denver Nicks
October 17, 2014 1:12 PM EDT
Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden has come under fire in recent days for what some charge is the agency’s stumbling response to the appearance of Ebola in America. This week, reporters and lawmakers alike grilled Frieden over how two nurses in Texas contracted the virus and how one of them was able to board an airplane even after she reported a raised temperature.
Breakdowns in good practice notwithstanding, it’s important to remember that Ebola in the U.S. is largely contained and very unlikely to lead to any kind of significant outbreak. Still, the charges leveled against Frieden raise a question that leads to a surprisingly complicated answer: just what, exactly, can—and should—the CDC do?
Since time immemorial, public health officials’ main weapon against the outbreak of a disease as been to restrict the ability of people to interact with one another, also known as a quarantine. The term comes from the Latin “quadraginta,” meaning 40, and is derived from the 40-day period ships traveling from plague-stricken regions were kept at bay before being allowed to dock in medieval European ports.
Imposing a quarantine—effectively stripping innocent people of the most basic right to move freely in the world—is one of the most serious actions a government can take against its own citizenry. Partly for this reason, in the American federal system (designed from the outset to check the power of the national government) the power to quarantine resides largely with state and local authorities. Should Texas, or any other state, someday face the threat of a true epidemic, the states have broad authority to restrict the movement of people within their own borders. Public health codes granting the state power to impose quarantine orders vary from state to state, of course. Violating a quarantine order in Louisiana is punishable by a fine of up to $100 and up to a year in prison; in Mississippi the same infraction could cost a violator up to $5000 and up to five years in prison.
The federal government does have its own powers. The CDC, as the U.S.’s primary agency for taking action to stop the spread of disease, has broad authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to restrict travel into the country and between states of an infected person or a person who has come in contact with an infected person, according to Laura Donohue, director of the Center on National Security and the Law at Georgetown Law School. Federal quarantine can be imposed, too, on federal property, like a military base or National Forest land. And as the preeminent employer of experts on public health crises, the CDC is always likely to get involved within any affected state in the event of a looming pandemic.
But its power to act is extremely restricted. The agency traditionally acts in an advisory role and can only take control from local authorities under two circumstances: if local authorities invite them to do so or under the authority outlined in the Insurrection Act in the event of a total breakdown of law and order.
And here the picture becomes murkier yet because authority does not always beget power.
“It’s not a massive regulatory agency,” said Wendy Parmet, a professor in public health law at Northeastern University in Boston. “They don’t have ground troops. They don’t have tons of regulators. They’re scientists. Even if the states asked them to do it it’s not clear how they would do it.”
Even in the highly unlikely event that the CDC were called to respond to a—let’s reiterate: extremely-unlikely-to-occur—pandemic, quarantine and isolation would be imposed not by bespeckled CDC scientists but by local or federal law enforcement or troops. Most importantly, the CDC is extremely reluctant to be seen as a coercive government agency because it depends as much as any agency on the good will and acquiescence of citizens in order to respond effectively to a public health emergency. When the bright lights of the Ebola crisis are not on it, the CDC will still need people to get vaccinated, to go to the doctor when they get sick, and to call the authorities if they see trouble.
“Our public health system is built on voluntary compliance,” Donohue tells TIME. “If the CDC starts to become the enemy holding a gun to [someone’s] head and keeping them in their house, they lose insight.”
> ...and makes refusal to wear a face-covering a violation of federal law <
Wait, what? The CDC is now making federal law? I must have missed a lesson in my high school civics class. I thought only Congress could do that.
I don’t recall the clause in the Constitution that gives an agency of the federal government the power to dictate what we must wear at any given time or place. Must be in one of those penumbras.
“We, the Unelected and Unaccountable, in order to more perfectly cement our power, establish a police state, insure domestic docility, provide for the common subjugation, promote our own self interests, and secure the blessings of tyranny to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Edict for the Communist States of America.”
I’m not sure how this is a law.
“I’m not sure how this is a law.”
Just be silent and obey, comrade.
The very definition of tyranny: unaccountable power and control. The more we obey, the more they will seize.
Maybe one of our brave federal judges will stand up to the CDC. Maybe not.
since when does the CDC make laws?
But the difference here is while Ebola was a public health issue, COVID isn’t. Not a virus with a 99% recovery rate, and that’s according to the same organization. No, this is a power play, designed to exert power over you, the individual.
“I’m not sure how this is a law.”
Now you getting technical and applying outdated speak to make words fit your racist constitutional beliefs. It is time you embrace the leftist lexicon of 2021 where dictionaries derived from white privilege are obsolete and oppressive.
Law (noun)
2. a rule defining correct procedure or behavior in a sport.
“the laws of the game”
synonyms:
rule · regulation · principle · convention · direction · instruction · guideline · practice
The CDC should be armed as completely as the US military/
Maan, just when I learned how a bill becomes a law...Schoolhouse Rock doesn’t rock so much./s
It’s NOT a law unless it were passed by Congress and signed by the pResident.
They don’t hace ground troops my eye. Even NOAA has a force with fully automatic weapons. Citizens have short memories.
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