made this sweeping ruling literally, within an instance, changes the way we will travel and the biden administration has said it s not clear in terms of what it s going to do. if it s going to file an appeal and i think that just creates even more confusion because if we are to believe this mask mandate was necessary to lessen the transmission of covid-19, it is really unexplainable as to why the biden administration won t challenge it. i roids it was due to expire in a couple weeks but i am concerned this really sets a precedent and says that the cdc and presidential administration cannot enact, you know, decisions like this mask mandate even in the face of a public-health crisis. so i think there is some bigger issues here that need to be looked at. i am so glad you brought that up because, in general, they have this judge has decided the cdc couldn t do this. it is not like the judge decided well, from a public-health perspective, we don t need this anymore. it was completely di
cdc couldn t help people if they should get tested in isolations. they would get tests andblow back to the administration. again, the cdc makes these decisions. i expect them to make the guidance. go ahead. can you give us an update martha: we re going to duck out for a moment to bring in dr. paul offett from the children s hospital of philadelphia. thanks for being with us today. i guess my first question to you, just jumping off of what we listened to there at the white house is what is fully vaccinated and should the cdc recommend that a booster is what makes you fully vaccinated? so the question is what do we want from this vaccine? if what we want from the vaccine is protection against serious illness, the kind of illness that causes you to seek a doctor s care or go to the
mandate, the agencies can only act when congress explicitly gives them the power, a there s skepticism about whether congress has done that. these conservative justices led by chief justice john roberts, they have repeatedly reined in agency power. it was just a few months ago in august that they told the biden administration that the cdc couldn t keep an eviction moratorium that was enacted because of the pandemic just saying that the cdc didn t have the power, so a similar argument here. here s the chief justice explaining his skepticism on this. you re saying that congress acted. don t complain that congress hasn t done anything and, you know, that was 50 years ago that you re saying congress acted. i don t think it had covid in mind. that was almost closer to the spanish flu than it is to today s problem. now, i understand the idea that agencies are more expert than corporation and i understand the idea that they can move more
with the death rate today be much higher than it is now? maybe, maybe not. we don t know. it s a conversation we should ve had before we locked the entire country down and put 10 million people out of work. we didn t have that conversation.d instead we outsourced the decision to public health officials and that is a strange irony of the moment were living through. one of the main lessons of this crisis is at the public health establishment failed us badly.hl the world health organization colluded with the chinese government to lie about critically relevant facts are in the early days of the outbreak. once the coronavirus reached ouh shores, the cdc couldn t seem to produce working tests, those were disasters. many people died because the people we trusted to protect our health didn t do it. they have been thoroughly discredited. at the same time though, we are being asked to trust these same people without hesitation and for the most part we are doing that. in other words, the expertsi