Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

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Stop lying. Trump never claimed that the pandemic was a "democrat hoax".

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-ap-f...

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize his response to the pandemic without making things up.

The current thinking is that mutations are most likely to occur in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but vaccines are less effective in those with malfunctioning immune systems.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...

I'll leave you with another Biden quote from October 2020: "220,000 Americans dead. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who's responsible for not taking control — in fact, not saying, I take no responsibility, initially — anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America."

We're up to 900K deaths now. Is it fair to blame Biden for failing to get it under control? Probably not, but he never hesitated to blame his predecessor. Politics is never fair.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...

You are certainly correct that Trump didn't refer directly to COVID as a hoax, but only in the literal sense and especially when given the chance in the following days to clean it up. However, applying literalism to Trump's words or even divining a context is a fool's errand. He so often seemed to be talking directly to his 'fifth avenue', ride-or-die supporters, hungry to depict him as a victim of the treachery of an 'angry', 'elitist', liberal Left.

One time he failed to clean it up was the very famous time he referred to getting disinfectant into the body as a COVID remedy, although he never literally said the oft-repeated phrase 'inject bleach'. After doctors were left condemning his comments, he said that he was being sarcastic, which I think is non-sensical given the subject matter (i.e., in the middle of the a pandemic, during a press conference surrounded by doctors, POTUS wants to go spit-balling on potential remedies and get all sarcastic on... disinfectants & their applicability to this virus).

As far as presidential responsibility for COVID deaths go, I think things are a bit different now owing to personal responsibility. Since we have vaccines now, should you refuse the vaccine and then die from the virus can you really blame POTUS for your death? Biden took the unusual step of reneging on his promise against vaccine mandates to do just that later once there was a new wave of deaths in August 2021. I give him credit for casting aside the obvious political implications of reneging on a promise and that of a obviously unpopular mandate, as well. To then blame this same POTUS for more deaths seems especially unfair. Biden and his medical advisors know the truth that this virus just won't 'go away' as Trump would like to say with a flick of his wrist in its early days, and that we will have to get bare-knuckled about it or suffer more deaths from evermore mutations.

So you give Biden credit for violating federal law by issuing a mandate when he lacked statutory authority? Which other federal laws do you think he should ignore?

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21a244_hgci.pdf

Specifically, no, I'm not giving him credit for violating federal law and I don't dispute that the order lacked statutory authority. However, since a president is the only official tasked with protecting the country, he has certain emergency powers (e.g., the same powers Trump used to take money from the Pentagon against Congress' wishes to fund his wall construction) to ensure national defense, at a minimum. COVID is such a threat. (Was the border?)

While the Supreme Court (which isn't tasked with this same security role) decided against him on this order, as the executive it was reasonable for him to attempt to use this tool to gain control of COVID spread.

Given the divided, political state of our country and seeing that the COVID outbreak has taken an even worse upswing now, I personally feel like he did the right thing here. You'll note that I was not opining on the legal nature of the move. Other presidents have made orders without knowing their legality when the circumstances call for it. Lincoln and habeas corpus comes to mind.

What federal law did he ignore?

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