The Conservative majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court are have clearly come out as against safety measures like vaccines and mask mandates to curb the growing and alarming rate of COVID-19 cases across the country. The highest court in the land recently struck down crucial legislation mandating vaccines in American workplaces.
Trump appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch even went as far to offer his completely untrained and uneducated medical knowledge when weighing in on the issue, when last Thursday he presented medical “information” to support the desire of the far right majority court to en such mandates.
During oral arguments, irocnially made remotely by two right wing attorneys because both are sick with COVID, Gorsuch compared the coronavirus, which has killed over 850,000 Americans, to the seasonal flu.
Gorsuch told the Court that the flu kills “hundreds, thousands of people every year.”
The CDC, however, reports that the flu kills 12,000 to 52,000 annually, while COVID has killed over 385,00 in 2020 alone.
Steven Mazie, The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter, said that Goursuch even laughed out loud when the U.S. Solicitor General said that the coronavirus pandemic was “terrible.”
On Monday, however, the Supreme Court issued a revised transcript of the arguments, which seems to correct Gorsuch’s statement, saying instead that he believes the flu kills “hundreds, thousands of people every year.”
The Hill explains:
“This erroneous transcription prompted legions of tweets and at least one media report that tut-tutted Gorsuch and pointed out the actual number of annual flu deaths, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate, is between 12,000 and 52,000 — well below the hundreds of thousands the conservative justice purportedly cited.“
Regardless of the misquote on the number of flu deaths, and whether or not he actually said “hundreds, thousands,” or “hundreds of thousands,” Gorsuch and his fellow conservative justices are clearly skeptical of the seriousness of the pandemic and Gorsuch did laugh at the “terrible” pandemic comment, in addition to his refusal to wear a mask in public.
