Day 215: Is That Even Legal?

It's not the first time we at PlagueBlog Headquarters have asked ourselves whether some random governmental action allegedly against coronavirus is legal, but this one is an all-caps kind of moment: The CDC Issues Sweeping Temporary Halt On Evictions Nationwide Amid Pandemic. You can read some kind of preliminary copy of the order here. (It's in Courier, so it must be official.) It's effective from publication later this week to December 31st. No compensation to landlords is included, though one imagines that banks will not want to foreclose on such properties and become the unfortunate landlords themselves.

PlagueBlog eagerly awaits the coming lawsuits.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were down 6% today due to a change in the definition of probable case that the state has applied retroactively. (Worldometers seems to have dug up the revised numbers, reporting 22 deaths and 288 new cases, which is up about a quarter of a percentage point as usual.)