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Our doctor advised it would not be a good idea for us to get Covid-19. We already wheeze after ascending the stairs or rolling the garbage bin to the curb or opening the mail, so any further respiratory burden seems like a bad idea. Thus, even though some have declared the pandemic over, we remain cautious.  Good luck inviting us to any public place.  Pascal may have said that all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone, but he wasn’t talking about us. We’re quite happy to avoid the madding and infectious crowds by sitting home with a good book or mediocre tv show, or by planting a nose against the kitchen window, watching the red shouldered hawk wait for dinner to show up at the pond. You might even say that we live deliberately. 

Our doctor also advised us to get every Covid booster vaccination as soon as possible, and we have done so.  Some of our Twitter acquaintances and frenemies have told us that the boosters will kill us or will permit Melinda Gates to spy on our every movement.  Those threats do not bother us.  If anyone is going to go through all the trouble to plant a chip in our arm, they’re probably not looking to bump us off any time soon.  And, as mentioned above, we don’t actually engage in a lot of movement, so fair play to anyone who chooses to spy on us.  We’ll be a stationary dot on the screen, reading The New Yorker or glaring outside at the geese.  

So, yes, we are unabashedly pro-vax.  Bring on the hate emails.  We’ll toss the virtual missives into the virtual fireplace.   And we’ll wish you good luck.  

But we do not wish good luck to litigants challenging vaccine mandates. When governments or employers insist that public-facing employees must be vaccinated in order to perform their jobs, we are relieved and  grateful. If employees decide to give up their jobs rather than be vaccinated against Covid, we shake our heads at their tenacity and grieve for their health, but so be it.  We might call it a remarkable sacrifice, or a stupid sacrifice. Or a remarkably stupid sacrifice. And yet, in truth, some employees do not want to sacrifice anything.  They want to remain unvaxxed “truebloods,” inflicting their viral silliness on the rest of us.  Luckily, pretty much every time the antivaxxers sue to get their way, they lose.  

Continue Reading Court Upholds Washington State Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates

On Monday, Bexis blogged about a very bad vaccination decision — bad in its reasoning and bad in its maleficent effect on vaccine policy in this country.  Over the past couple of years, we’ve written quite a few posts on vaccination cases. The law in this area has gotten a vigorous workout largely because of Covid-19, of course.  That particular vaccine became a subject of massive political debate for reasons that seem entirely stupid to us. 

Why stupid?  Let us count the ways.  First, the biggest vaccine haters are often supporters of the former President, whose administration did a lot to hasten development of the Covid vaccine.  Second, the distrust of the Covid vaccine is largely premised on ignorance and conspiracy mongering.  Third, the claims that Covid vaccine mandates undermine the Bill of Rights not only ignore logic, they ignore clear precedents involving other vaccines. 

Indeed, we think that observing the treatment of other vaccines, free of the fog of political warfare, might help clarify thinking on vaccine mandates.  Perhaps people can at least doff their tin foil hats temporarily.  

In Goe v. Zucker, 43 F.4th 19 (2d Cir. 2022), the Second Circuit reviewed a proposed class action challenging the scope of medical exemptions to New York’s mandatory school immunization requirements.  Prior to June 2019, New York allowed exemptions from the immunization requirements for both nonmedical and medical reasons. But after a big measles outbreak, New York repealed the nonmedical exemption (as we said in our vaccine post last week: yay) and clarified the medical exemption.  The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit, contending that the new vaccine regulations violated their fourteenth amendment due process rights, as well as section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 USC section 794.  The district court dismissed the complaint and the plaintiffs appealed to the Second Circuit.  

Continue Reading Second Circuit Upholds New York Measles Vaccine Mandate

We’re happy to report on a couple of favorable decisions involving some of the COVID-19-related issues that the Blog has been covering.  We have one each on ivermectin injunctions, Shoemaker v. UPMC, ___ A.3d ___, 2022 WL 4372772 (Pa. Super. Sept. 22, 2022), and vaccine mandates, Children’s Health Defense, Inc. v. Rutgers, 2022 WL 4377515 (D.N.J. Sept. 22, 2022).

Continue Reading Two Recent COVID-19 Wins

We listen to the This American Life show on National Public Radio most weeks, and it often reveals interesting things about, uh, this American life.   On Saturday, as we drove around the Main Line doing chores, we listened to a This American Life program that illustrated the Tolstoyan ditty about how unhappy families are each…

Last year we recounted a decision that denied a preliminary injunction to selfish New Mexicans who think that they have a right to endanger others by refusing to be vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. Specifically the court denied relief to a registered nurse who claimed that she has a right to treat…

Last term the newly empowered conservative majority on the Supreme Court demonstrated to all that precedent is not so precedential, even when it had stood for nearly fifty years.  They very nearly did it again, but just missed, targeting precedent on religious exemptions and vaccine mandates that has been around for more than twice as long.

Continue Reading Vaccine Mandates and Religion at the Supreme Court

As we mentioned in last year’s comprehensive “Survival of the Vaxxest” blogpost on the constitutionality (for over a century) of governmental vaccine mandates, there is no appellate precedent requiring any sort of religious exemption to such mandates.  Freedom of religion does not mean freedom to infect everyone else.

While some jurisdictions allow exceptions

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Drug & Device Resources

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FDA-regulated products now account for an estimated one-fifth of overall economic activity in the U.S. They have also been the focus of a litigation explosion. This timely guide covers all aspects of litigation involving drugs, medical devices, vaccines and other FDA-regulated prescription products.
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