Despite the pandemic, the continuing election fight, and the general uncertainty surrounding nearly all things political in modern America, Supporters of religious liberty have seen a bright silver lining in the 5 to 4 SCOTUS decision Thursday overturning New York state’s strict limit on number of attendees  at religious services instituted ostensibly as a remedy to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The decision before the court was described this way by SCOTUS Blog:

(1) Whether the provisions of Executive Order 202.68 by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) that limit in-person “house of worship” attendance to 10 or 25 people, but allow numerous secular businesses to operate without any capacity restrictions, violate the free exercise clause; and (2) whether the courts below erred in concluding that Jacobson v. Massachusetts and South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom require the application of a deferential, rational-basis review in all cases challenging government action taken in response to a public health emergency, even when fundamental rights such as free exercise are at stake.

While Constitutional originalists sing the praises of the court’s decision to uphold the separation between church and state, progressive thought leaders are pounding the familiar drum of death and mayhem, asserting the decision — as Jeff Sachs, a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University wrote at CNN — was not only “illiterate” but will “cost lives.”

But here’s a funny thing that’s gone relatively unreported in the mainstream press, but that a clever twitter user Matt Cover discovered: Cuomo’s argument for lockdowns before SCOTUS provided no evidence that religious gatherings were actually spreading the disease.

An important but overlooked part of the SCOTUS ruling on NY's COVID rules is that New York provided NO EVIDENCE that the religious institutions were contributing to the spread of COVID.

None.

— Tryptophan is Nature's NyQuil (@MattCover) November 27, 2020

SCOTUS notes this in its opinion pic.twitter.com/Ps9RQb454u

— Tryptophan is Nature's NyQuil (@MattCover) November 27, 2020

This is such an enormously important point that Sotomayor's dissent simply ignores.

New York's rules aren't based on evidence, but on scienc-y conventional wisdom.

— Tryptophan is Nature's NyQuil (@MattCover) November 27, 2020

This small, under-the-radar piece of information is about as indicative of the way this pandemic, the election, and most politically charged issues are playing out these days: with little more than strong assertions from influential voices that apparently often lack the data to back up their claims or — at best — decline to faithfully share the data should they actually possess it.

In the event anyone might wonder why things look lately like they’ve gone off the rails, this short twitter thread explains it well. One side of the political aisle sees no need to even prove why their movements toward tyranny are in anyone’s best interest. And then, when those movements are rebuffed, the media sets about chastising those who breathe a sigh of relief as supportive of stupidity and death.