Will Rare Outbreaks Become More Commonplace And Widespread?

KillingPublicHealth

ToSaveItVille

The first very unfortunate case of polio has been detected in the United States in almost a decade:

A case of polio has been detected in New York, the first instance of the virus in almost a decade.

The case was confirmed in a resident of Rockland County, about 36 miles north of New York City, the first case since 2013, according to the state and county health departments.

The patient is no longer considered contagious, the AP reports, but has developed paralysis. The patient was unvaccinated, the CDC reports.

Tests run by the state health department's lab, and confirmed by the CDC, showed that the patient had contracted a strain of polio likely derived from an oral polio vaccine, which are no longer administered in the U.S...

Will such outbreaks become more commonplace and widespread in the States?

Well, if a certain intertwined cluster of litigious conservative organizations have their way that could very easily happen:

Through a wave of pandemic-related litigation, a trio of small but mighty conservative legal blocs has rolled back public health authority at the local, state and federal levels, recasting America's future battles against infectious diseases.

Galvanized by what they've characterized as an overreach of COVID-related health orders issued amid the pandemic, lawyers from the three overlapping spheres — conservative and libertarian think tanks, Republican state attorneys general, and religious liberty groups — are aggressively taking on public health mandates and the government agencies charged with protecting community health.

"I don't think these cases have ever been about public health," said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney for the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based libertarian litigation group. "That's the arena where these decisions are being made, but it's the fundamental constitutional principles that underlie it that are an issue."

Through lawsuits filed around the country, or by simply wielding the threat of legal action, these loosely affiliated groups have targeted individual counties and states and, in some cases, set broader legal precedent...

And how do the legal beagles involved justify their actions?

...Several lawyers associated with these conservative groups told Kaiser Health News they did not think their work would have a negative effect on public health. "I honestly think the best way for them to preserve the ability to protect the public health is to do it well, and to respect people's rights while you do it," said Becket (Law)'s (Mark) Rienzi...

Given the radical transformation of the US'ian judiciary recently this is a very scary situation, indeed.

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It will be most interesting to see if things in Canada move from the scream-a-thons to litigation anytime soon...Not sure such a strategy will gain as much traction here.

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