>They not only didn't consider natural immunity but they didn't even promote strengthening your natural immunity through diet and vitamins. Puzzling is a nice way to put it. Citing the “liberty interests of the unvaccinated,” a federal judge in the Western District of Louisiana issued a nationwide order Tuesday against efforts by the administration of President Joe Biden to require health care workers nationwide to receive a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, enjoined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “along with their directors, employees, Administrators and Secretaries,” from implementing the Nov. 5, 2021 mandate “as to all healthcare providers, suppliers, owners, employees, and all others covered” by the mandate. According to its summary, the Biden Administration’s mandate required “Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers and suppliers” — in other words, entities and people who interact financially with the federal government — to generally require COVID-19 vaccinations “to help protect the health and safety of residents, clients, patients, PACE participants, and staff” if they wish to continue to “participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.” Doughty also ordered “that the scope of this injunction shall be nationwide, except for the states of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, since these ten states are already under a preliminary injunction order dated November 29, 2021, issued by [another judge in] the Eastern District of Missouri.” The Missouri case is already being appealed. The vaccine mandate went into effect as an emergency rule — without the standard “notice and comment” rulemaking generally contemplated by the Administrative Procedure Act. The attorneys general of a plethora of states were led by the State of Louisiana in challenging the mandate. “Defendants have acted without statutory authority, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, violated the Social Security Act, violated the Congressional Review Act, and violated the Constitution by promulgating and implementing” the mandate, the plaintiff states alleged. In a 34-page memorandum explaining the order, Judge Doughty recapped the size and scope of the mandate (citations omitted): The CMS Mandate requires the staff of twenty-one types of Medicare and Medicaid healthcare providers to receive one vaccine by December 6, 2021, and to receive the second vaccine by January 4, 2022. Failure to comply with the CMS Mandate may result in penalties up to and including “termination of the Medicare/Medicaid Provider Agreement.” According to the CMS, the CMS Mandate regulates over 10.3 million health care workers in the United States. Of those 10.3 million, 2.4 million healthcare workers are currently unvaccinated. The beginning of the memorandum reads as an explainer about how judges do their work — as if Doughty sensed the opinion might attract considerable attention from people who do not frequently read judicial opinions. “The opinion expressed hereto is legal, not political or personal,” Doughty wrote in a separate 34-page memorandum. The judge did ding Biden, though, for a policy flip-flop “President-Elect Biden initially did not think vaccines should be mandatory,” Doughty wrote. “On September 9, 2021, President Biden changed his mind announcing his intention to impose a national mandate. Both the OSHA Mandate and the CMS Mandate were imposed approximately two months later.” After agreeing that the plaintiff states had standing to sue, Doughty favorably cited the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision to block the enforcement of a workplace vaccination or frequent COVID testing requirement in workplaces covered by OSHA. He then slammed the way the mandate was adopted: