by Glenn Reynolds
COVID-19 Public Health Emergency likely to be extended.
Aug. 18 (UPI) — The Department of Health and Human Services is planning to extend the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, the agency said on Thursday.
The department still plans to give local and state health authorities 60 day notice ahead of ending the declaration, which would reduce expanded Medicaid coverage among other things.
“The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency remains in effect and as HHS committed to earlier, we will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration,” an HHS spokesperson told POLITICO on Thursday.
The current emergency declaration also allows for expanded telehealth services and higher federal payments to hospitals.
LOCKDOWNS AND MASKS FOREVER: Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response. My piece in the WSJ on the plans by the CDC and WHO for a “more stringent” response to the next pandemic.
It was bad enough that Dr. Fauci, the CDC and the WHO ignored the best scientific advice at the start of this pandemic. It’s sociopathic for them to promote a worse catastrophe for future outbreaks. If a drug company behaved this way, ignoring evidence while marketing an ineffective treatment with fatal side effects, its executives would be facing lawsuits, bankruptcy and probably criminal charges. Dr. Fauci and his fellow public officials can’t easily be sued, but they need to be put out of business long before the next pandemic.
Jeffrey Tucker at the Brownstone Institute exposes the details of the CDC’s power grab and proposes a better solution.
Meanwhile, the CDC itself is being reorganized. But don’t be fooled by any appearance of contrition. They still have a legal appeal in process that would put a mask back on your face when traveling. The new agency to which some its pandemic responsibilities will be transferred will have a 1,000-person staff to start, people paid the big bucks to sit around coming up with new ways to whip up disease panic and start another crackdown.
A better solution would be to abolish the CDC. States can handle all its responsibilities. It did not even exist until 1947. Its purpose was mosquito control, spraying a now-banned chemical (DDT) everywhere. These days we handle that by going to Home Depot.
The CDC as an agency grew out of the 1944 Public Health Services Act that permitted nationally ordered quarantines for the first time. The legislative history of that thing remains a mystery to me. Regardless, it is nowhere justified in the US Constitution. This act needs to go too. So too all the federal agencies to which it gave rise. This is the only real solution.
The Spanish Flu of 1918 was a far deadlier virus than Covid-19, but America handled it much better because the CDC didn’t exist.
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