“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
- William Pitt
I am writing as we are seeing the individual liberties of the majority of the citizenry being suppressed as much or more than any time in my memories. And, it is being justified as a "necessity".
I know, I know, "but...but...we have to sit at home or we will all DIE!!" The end of the world narrative that is being pushed on us endlessly by almost everyone is making it seem that if we leave our homes and try to resume any sort of "normality" it will kill untold millions. With every prediction of this disease having been proven wrong, destroying our economy is idiotic. If your home is being eaten by termites, you can make sure it does not happen by burning down your house. You prevent the termites from destroying your house but you prevent you and your family from having a house. That is a similar situation to where we are today.
The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States states:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That says the we shall not have our ability to worship or exercise our religion suppressed, that we have the right to peacefully assemble, and to complain at treatment by the government. We are being told we cannot gather to worship, we cannot gather to protest the overreach by the government, we cannot even gather to do anything.
Does the government have the power to shut down the entire economy beyond what businesses that they deem "essential"? (Which is one real issue I have with this - more below) Under specific circumstances, probably. However, that typically would require some sort of martial law declaration or at least some sort of edict from the legislative branch of each State. To unilaterally destroy the economy and the businesses and wealth of the citizens of the USA under the guise of "protection" is well outside of the powers given to the government in my opinion as well as other Constitutional scholars much more learned than I.
To declare a state of emergency and require people to shelter in place for a short term to mitigate a disaster is something that happens quite often after a disaster of man-made or natural variety. I think a limited declaration was called for and would have been prudent to give time for more data to be accumulated and to break any cycle of infection of Covid-19. That time has more than past, in my opinion.
The stay at home declarations were not to "save lives", not directly anyway. The purpose was to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by a massive and uncontrollable surge of patients. This has not happened. In certain locales, like the greater NYC area, there is no doubt that the numbers have been close to if not exceeding the capacity of the medical facilities, at least in short term. But, this was with the stay at home measures in place I will remind you. The overwhelming shortage of ventilators has not occurred, other than spot shortages. Even New York has given up some of the ventilators they have/had to other States as they did not need them. (this being less than two weeks after the Mayor of NYC and the Governor of NY went public screaming how short they were of ventilators!) We were told the State of Washington was a "war zone" and had a rapid growth in deaths well before most of the rest of the country. "Experts" were saying that there would be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of deaths there in short order. Less than a month after that an emergency field hospital in Seattle was dismantled having NEVER SEEN A PATIENT!
There are only two ways this pandemic ends:
1 - we reach the 60 - 75% (whatever the number is, I have seen many) of the population that has the infection and recovers (the "herd immunity" you may have heard of), or
2 - we have an effective vaccine and get it administered to a similar percentage of the population as above.
Since the vaccine is estimated to be late this year, if not a lot longer (effective vaccines take 18 months to years to produce normally, especially for a novel virus), the "herd immunity" is the only answer. Sheltering and keeping the economy shut down is not going to allow this. I know, I know..."we will DIE if we go out". B.S. There is a rather large and rapidly growing body of research that shows that a much larger percentage of the population has already been exposed to the virus and have survived it. (which you will NOT find in the US media, you have to hunt for it) The first antibody studies done on people in Washington State as well as in various European countries have shown exposure numbers 50+ times higher than the testing shows. That means the mortality rate of this virus is being immensely overstated. If a large portion of the population has been exposed and recovered without ever interacting with the medical community at all, then percentage of infected that actually do succumb is much, much lower. There are experts that now say the CFR (case fatality rate) is going to be only marginally higher than a bad Influenza pandemic.
My point is, I think the government has overstepped its authority. I mentioned well above about the government specifying what businesses are "essential". That is very arbitrary. For example, I do not drink alcohol. I find it ludicrous that ABC stores and liquor stores are "essential". (I know a lot of you would disagree with me, and I respect that - I was just making a point) Government does not, nor should they have the ability to tell the public what is "essential". That is tyranny by almost any definition. Particularly since all these actions taken have been based on what is being proven to have been a gross overstatement of dangers of the disease (remember "up to 2 million dead"). But, it has been done. There is nothing we can do to change that. What we can do is get the country back to work. The economy is being totally destroyed. I predict this will be looked back on when it is history and being viewed as one of the most egregious mistakes of all time. We are potentially heading into a depression due to overreact to bad information.
I ask those of you that are saying we need to stay shut down to save lives:
How about those that will commit suicide as they face economic ruin? The mental health toll of this may never become truly known.
How about those that will face disease and/or death from malnutrition?
What about spousal abuse and/or child abuse that is increasing as people are forced together with no end in sight?
I have heard from a lot of you over the years defending all the free meals we serve at our schools because "these are the only nutrition these kids may get in a day." Well, they are not getting it. (and even if overstated, everyone will admit that the free lunch program is vital to a percentage of kids out there).
How many people will face financial ruin as the business that they have built with their blood, sweat, and tears has to close?
The government gets the income from people working and businesses running. Sales taxes pay a large (to all) of the budget expenses of most cities and towns. What happens to them? No taxes coming in means governments cannot help where needed. The Federal government can only bail things out so long and so much. (I personally feel they have already exceeded that level!) With a much reduced level of revenue coming in the debt will pile up, even without more bailouts.
I have used this one (in a slightly different form - I wonder which is right?) before, but I will end with some wise words:
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
- Ben Franklin
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