B.1.1.7 Mutation Should Be "Treated as a Separate Epidemic," Say Experts as Wisc Court Says All COVID-19 Viruses Are the Same
Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Gov Tony Evers needs to declare a new state of emergency; use the academic resources our state has cultivated to draft justification for the new threat in the specific form of the B.1.1.7 variant [aka U.K. variant, British variant or Kent variant].
This should be done soon in such a formulation that to disagree with the executive action is to disagree with evolution and the scientific community, and the Wisconsin University System in which the population retains pride and support.
On March 31, four rightist Supreme Court of Wisconsin justices issued a sweeping decision, blocking Gov Evers' executive orders declaring an emergency and mandating masks in many circumstances (Jeré Fabick v. Tony Evers 2020AP001718-OA Case History); (Opinions, Decision text); (Executive Order #105, February 4, 2021).
Evers can still declare a new state of emergency, but such a new executive order must be predicated on what the justices regard as new enabling conditions, the four Republican justices held, inventing a new reading of the power of the Wisconsin governor.
Still, the COVID-19 variants' genetics have changed so radically and rapidly, and behave so differently (and destructively) that these mutated biological agents incontrovertibly constitute a new underlying cause and enabling condition for a new executive order declaring a state of emergency.
Jeré Fabick v.Tony Evers
"[J]udicial immodesty, [that] goes beyond the relief requested and declares Executive Order #105 [Relating to Declaring a State of Emergency and Public Health Emergency] unlawful with scant analysis and without candid justification," (p. 2. Dissent, Walsh Bradley)The seven justices agree on the authority of the governor to declare a public health emergency and issue emergency orders.
Beyond a profound disagreement on standing, a primary disagreement concerns the governor's power to declare subsequent multiple states of emergency for what the Republican-supported majority assert is the same "basis," the same "enabling condition," and underlying cause.
The dissent notes two relevant state statutes — Wis. Stat. §323.02(16) and 323.10 — relate to occurrences or imminent threat of public health emergencies, an argument the Republican refuse to engage, beyond a dismissive paragraph.
Gov Evers had declared four separate states of emergencies after the State Health department reported the threat of the Coronavirus and new data indicating spikes in cases and the imminent threat of increased community spread.
The state's case was briefed and argued by the Wisconsin Dept of Justice, brief filed by Hannah S. Jurss, assistant attorney general, and Joshua L. Kaul, Wisconsin attorney general. There was an oral argument by Hannah S. Jurss.
"[Plaintiff] Fabick, a single Wisconsin resident, filed suit as a taxpayer [after the third declaration of a State of Emergency and Public Health Emergency]. He brought his suit as an original action before this court, arguing that the Governor lacks the statutory authority to declare successive states of emergency 'arising from the same public health emergency,'" notes Justice Walsh Bradley (p. 4, dissent).
Gov Evers Can Declare New COVID State of Emergency
The most recent declaration of emergency is Executive Order #105 (Feb), struck down by the Court for relying on the same enabling conditions as past COVID-related declared emergencies.
Though Executive Order #105 mentions the B.1.1.7 variant — [aka U.K. variant, British variant or Kent variant], a COVID-19 virus with many gene mutations — as part of the reasoning for the Feb 2021 declared state of emergency, micro-biologists and epidemiologists note the B.1.1.7-U.K.variant is now dominant in the United States, and in Wisconsin, as noted by the Wisconsin Dept of Health Services, after first appearing here in Jan 2021.
The CDC director on April 12 called for Michigan to "to enact shutdown measures in response to its worst-in-the-nation surge of coronavirus infections," reports the NYT.
Mishra continues:
Earlier in the pandemic, not many children were becoming infected with the coronavirus, and they did not appear to be major sources of virus transmission to other age groups. 'That changed with B.1.1.7' says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. 'We're now seeing substantial numbers of outbreaks in schools and in school-related activities.'
Further, Mishra writes, outbreaks among children in Wisconsin and Minnesota now have experts convinced that this mutated form of the virus presents a new threat in its capacity to infect children, and its capacity to successfully bind to human cells.
A rapidly growing outbreak of COVID-19 in Carver County, Minnesota, has been linked to school-sponsored and club sports activities. In a study done by the Minnesota Department of Health, researchers produced a detailed map of COVID-19 transmission showing that the B.1.1.7 variant caused about a quarter of these cases.
A similar outbreak was reported in Wisconsin, where all the children at a Dane County childcare center who tested positive were 6 years or younger.Now, a growing number of experts want the B.1.1.7 variant treated as a new virus because of its genetically enhanced tendency to attach to human proteins.
Researchers believe the variant spreads so rapidly because B.1.1.7 accumulated a large number of genetic changes—17 in total—including eight in the virus’s hallmark spike protein. The spike protein attaches to the ACE2 receptor protein, which is found on the outer wall of 72 types of human cells. After the virus latches onto the ACE2 receptor, it can enter the host cell, make more copies of itself, and trigger infection.
By binding more tightly to the ACE2 receptors, 'these mutations provide selective advantage to B.1.1.7, so that's why now it is spreading everywhere' says Olivier Schwartz, head of the Virus and Immunity Unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. 'It's a kind of a Darwinian selection process.' ...
Some researchers believe that B.1.1.7 behaves so differently from the original strain that it can even be 'treated as a separate epidemic,' says Ravindra Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge.B.1.1.7 also been causing problems in other ways. It carries a couple of genetic mutations in the spike protein called deletions, because they eliminate part of the genetic code, that help this variant escape antibodies during the body’s immune response after an infection.
So, why do Wisconsin Republican judicial policymakers and legislators want the COVID-19 virus treated the same as the radically different mutated strains?
Wisconsin Republicans need to recognize the fact of evolution and help the citizens of the state do everything in their power to slow this progression of the virus, its mutated strains and ensure the governor is not blocked by a corrupt Supreme Court and a corrupt state legislature.
Tony Evers and the Dept of Justice should be using Wisconsin's prominent research and academic resources, cultivated for over a century.
Wisconsin has the great public research institution, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, home of pioneering public health and Zoonotic disease research.
UW-Madison has 100s of research scientists and academics, evolutionary biologists, the Dept of Geoscience, the Genetics dept, the J.F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution; you get the picture.
The Wisconsin Dept of Justice needs to be prepared to argue the consensus of the scientific community at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Yes, this new strain should be treated as a new basis for a public health emergency and here's why.
What Gov Evers and Attorney General Kaul need to do is make the legal fight against COVID-19 variants a community fight, a citizen fight enlisting young Genetics and Geoscience students and academics, for example, and make outrageous decisions against our citizenry by corrupt justices come with unacceptable political costs.
In other words, if Republicans want to be on the side of the viruses, and kill our families, they pay the costs.
Starving children is fine with Republicans, as we know by Fabick which would have killed $50 million in funding to help provide food security, without desperate U.S. and Wisconsin negotiations to save the funds.
Basing more opposition to a new state of emergency on the proposition that evolution-in-action does not make genetically mutated strains a new virus, and a threat constituting a new emergency is crazy, and is jurisprudence that can be easily overturned.
Evolution is a fact. The scientific community knows more COVID-19 variants are coming. So does the Biden administration.
Biden's American Rescue Plan signed into law in March provides critical funding "to dramatically increase our country’s sequencing, surveillance, and outbreak analytics capacity at the levels demanded by the crisis," in a nod to virus mutations and evolution, both processes as real and predictable as the misery and devastation already inflicted (White House).
Guess what? In Wisconsin there are 1,000s of such people.
No comments:
Post a Comment