SocraticGadfly: Coronavirus Week106A: Hack Trump judge, hack Nate Silver, hack CDC, hack BIden

April 20, 2022

Coronavirus Week106A: Hack Trump judge, hack Nate Silver, hack CDC, hack BIden

The first and second are tied. A semi-incompetent US district judge in Florida, Kathryn Kimball Mazelle, on Tuesday presumed she knew more than SCOTUS and four appeals courts and said that Biden's mask mandate on public transportation didn't stand.

Then Nate Silver jumped in with thoughts that are stupid even for Nate Silver, which is saying a lot. He claimed, as in this piece and on Twitter, that masks on airplanes were of marginal effectiveness, totally got stats wrong on the amount of time per year actual flyers spend in airplanes and airports — and seemed to confuse or conflate median and mean in the process — then went really dumb and claimed that surely airlines on their own would split into mask and non-mask flights. His getting flight data wrong — in reality, of the 45 percent of Americans who do fly, per pre-COVID stats, they have five flights a year, and that involves about 5 hours one way between plane and terminal — masks can help stop superspreader events.

Meanwhile, airlines like Delta and JetBlue announced the mandate was over in the middle of flights. Fuck em. Especially Delta, for peddling "just the flu" misinformation.

And, meanwhile meanwhile, if the TSA isn't going to enforce it pending an appeal (and DOJ isn't asking for a temporary injunction pending an appeal) it's not going to be appealed, is it? More Biden COVID politics, eh, #BlueAnon?

And, with that, we tie this all together. 

If Biden's going to play politics, why should airlines let him rope them in? Per Delta, and per Dr. Eric, St. Anthony of Fauci has been claiming for two months that we're "headed toward" endemic. So, Delta was goosing things a bit, but it wasn't operating in a vacuum.

Meanwhile, Fauci's ultimate boss agency, the CDC, says it won't appeal until after its now-voided mask mandate extension was set to expire on its own on May 3. Yes, you read that right. (Update, April 21: In today's Snooze, print version, which I happened to glance at this morning, it appears that the appeal MAY come sooner. Who knows.)

But, the real issue is with the CDC's boss, Biden. Status Quo Joe listened to his pollsters' advice and decided to take a page from the Shrub Bush playbook and declare "Mission Accomplished." (Kuff, in normal #BlueAnon mode, ignores Biden's politicization in his not-fair-use quoting take on SQJ dropping enforcement.)

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