In July, President Joe Biden issued a series of rules requiring that federal workers, and workers at companies that receive federal contracts, must be vaccinated. That included health care workers who work for hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments. However, earlier this month, a three-judge panel in Texas blocked the implementation of the mandate for many large companies. Now, as The Washington Post reports, a federal district judge in Missouri has acted to block even the mandate for health care workers. That includes workers dealing face-to-(hopefully-masked-)face with COVID-19 patients in emergency rooms and workers caring for those most vulnerable to bad outcomes in nursing homes. What both rulings have in common is simple enough: Trump-appointed judges. Unsurprisingly, the ruling from District Judge Matthew Schelp is filled with the kind of political language that might be expected from a Trump appointee, with statements including claims that implementing the rule would create a “...politically and economically vast, federalism-altering, and boundary-pushing mandate...” The ruling also flatly accepts unsupported claims by a group of Republican state attorneys, headed by radical right Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt, that the mandate would cause a collapse of the health care system. According to Judge Schelp, it’s the mandate that’s the threat that “significantly understates the burden that its mandate would impose on the ability of health care facilities to provide proper care, and thus, save lives.” In fact, Judge Schelp ultimately echoes right-wing talking points by claiming that vaccine mandates mean that people will just walk off the job. “The loss of staffing in many instances will result in no care at all,” writes Schelp, “as some facilities will be forced to close altogether.” This isn’t just untrue; it’s a massive lie. Vaccines work. Vaccine mandates work. And this ruling will directly contribute to the death of Americans. But even that is just one part of what makes this so notably wrongheaded. Tuesday, Nov 30, 2021 · 4:47:13 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner Just to make it clear how unjustified this ruling is, Judge Schelp provides two examples of why the mandate is dangerous. One is a single Nebraska anesthesiologist who says he will quit rather than take a shot. The second is a Missouri nursing home where Republican AG Schmitt claims that the administrator says “out of about sixty-five employees, twenty have indicated that they are opposed to taking the vaccine, and if the mandate is imposed, that they will quit.” The same kind of claim was made about tens of thousands leaving the New York City Police Department. It didn’t happen. And thousands more abandoning the military. It didn’t happen. And planes grounded by crews leaving the airlines. It didn’t happen. In the widely publicized case of a healthcare system in Houston, where headlines blared those 150 workers who quit, they failed to mention that over 99% of workers did not. If that Missouri nursing home actually lost workers at the same rate as Houston Methodist, which was subject to months of Republican-supported protest and lawsuits, they would lose … not a single person. But judges are still making rulings supported by this kind of claim. Read more