![Key Metrics for Social Media Marketing [Infographic]](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/imgproxy/nP1lliSbrTbUmhFV6RdAz9qJZFvsstq3IG6orLUMMls/g:ce/rs:fit:770:435/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL3NvY2lhbF9tZWRpYV9yb2lfaW5vZ3JhcGhpYzIucG5n.webp "Key Metrics for Social Media Marketing [Infographic]")
On the last day of its term yesterday, in addition to gutting the EPA and generally advancing fascism, the Supreme Court also got one thing right: It refused to hear a challenge by disgruntled anti-vaxxers against the state of New York’s COVID vaccination mandate for healthcare workers.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a very grumpy and disinformed dissent, joined by Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, saying the Court should have considered the very serious and disinformed claims in the case.
At issue was the fact that the vaccination mandate initially allowed exemptions for both medical issues and for religious objections, but later the religious exemption was withdrawn. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is herself Catholic, said GTFO with your “religious” objections, because she certainly hadn’t seen any “sanctioned religious objection from any organized religion.” She noted that the Pope had encouraged people to get the COVID vaccines, especially if they planned on shitting in the woods.
But 16 New York healthcare workers sued to have their right to fret about nonexistent stuff formally recognized, claiming their religious freedom would be harmed if they had to be vaccinated, since the shots were developed and tested using cell lines derived from fetal cells.
As NBC News explains, both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech used fetal cell lines to test the effectiveness of their vaccine formulas, early in the development process, just as many other vaccines have been tested. Once the formulas were settled on, no more testing using fetal cell lines was necessary.
The plaintiff’s claims that they’d somehow be supporting abortion by getting vaccinated is extremely tenuous, because
The fetal tissue used in these processes came from elective abortions that happened decades ago. But the cells have since replicated many times, so none of the original tissue is involved in the making of modern vaccines.
So it is not true that Covid vaccines are manufactured using fetal cell lines, nor do they contain any aborted cells.
Well golly gee, kids, bet you know what Clarence Thomas claimed in his dissent, huh? The great jurist took the plaintiffs at their word, writing that they
object on religious grounds to all available COVID–19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children. […] Ordered to choose between their jobs and their faith, petitioners sued in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, claiming that the State’s vaccine mandate violated the Free Exercise Clause.
Again, the vaccines weren’t made with chopped up babies. No fetal-derived cell lines are used in their manufacture either. In the early testing process for the vaccine formulas, fetal cell lines were used, but again, the fetal tissue was collected decades ago. No fresh abortions are needed, thank you very much. And the actual vaccines going into people’s arms have not come in contact with any fetal cells at any point in their manufacture.
Finally, as New York’s lawyers pointed out, healthcare workers are already required to be vaccinated against measles and rubella, which no one seems to have freaked out about, even though only medical exemptions are allowed for those vaccinations. And hey, presto, when the rubella vaccine was developed, its formula was also tested using lab-grown stem cells derived from a fetus 50 years ago.
In conclusion, we expect anti-vaxxers to suddenly start demanding the right to get rubella, which can cause serious birth defects, in their sincere religious objection to an abortion that took place in the early 1970s.
Also, since matter can never be created or destroyed, we should point out to them the very real possibility that they have personally inhaled oxygen molecules that once went through the lungs of Adolf Hitler.
[CNBC / Dissent / NBC News / Photo: Martin Vorel,public domain license]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 a month so we can keep bringing you all the bad science and creepy public domain photos you need.
