Anyone who objects to the government’s response to the coronavirus risks being condemned as contemptuous of the health and welfare of fellow citizens. Unbridled hysteria seems to have caused a rejection of what is best about this country—the right to complain. Does the government’s anti-virus response justify criticism? I believe it does.
Under the guise of responding to a major viral epidemic, the government has ordered us to stay at home. We are told where we can go, when we can go, and who we can associate with once we get there. Businesses have been told if, when, and how they can engage in commerce. Criticisms of this policy fall into three categories: (1) the government’s response is overkill; (2) it is only marginally effective in dealing with the viral outbreak; and (3) the response raises questions of constitutionality.
At the heart of the issue is whether the hysteria is justified. Has the threat posed by the coronavirus been exaggerated? The Great Panic of 2020 occurred when the media repeated a false assertion by the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) that the coronavirus was many, many times more deadly than the common flu. "Experts have suggested that the world overreacted to the coronavirus pandemic,” writes Matt Margolis at PJ Media. “Stanford University professors Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya wrote in the Wall Street Journal that current estimates about the fatality rate of the coronavirus 'may be too high by orders of magnitude,' and based on their modeling, the coronavirus could have a mortality rate of 0.01% — that's ten times lower than the seasonal flu.”
Is it necessary for us to stay home from work, wash our hands every 15 minutes, and maintain a six-foot distance from our neighbors? For me, the answer is no. We have faced similar viral outbreaks every few years and we have survived without shutting down the nation. The US government estimates that 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter—not from COVID-19. Let that sink in as you are coerced to stay at home and behave as though we just experienced nuclear war.
The Globe and Mail summed up the situation: "How bad was [the coronavirus]? Well, the number of deaths was comparable to an average influenza season. That’s not nothing, but it’s not catastrophic, either, and it isn’t likely to overwhelm a competent health-care system. Quarantine belongs back in the Middle Ages. Save your masks for robbing banks. Stay calm and carry on. Let’s not make our attempted cures worse than the disease."
Next is the issue of whether the extreme response is effective in controlling the epidemic and saving lives. The answer was given by Tucker Carlson during his Fox TV show. Carlson called out the absurdity of forcing everyone to stay at home and avoid social contact while at the same time permitting grocery stores to remain open. When you go into a grocery store, Carlson said, you are exposed to everyone in your community. What is the point of staying at home if exceptions like this one are allowed? It just doesn’t make sense. The policy disrupts individual lives and only serves to reinforce the hysteria.
Government policy also has some ridiculous consequences. "We are starting to hear reports of arrests of those 'violating' the stay-home orders,” notes California Globe, “all while hundreds of inmates are released from jails and homeless still live on city streets, unrestrained, unsheltered, and apparently immune from police arrests or prosecution.” A Brooklyn woman was arrested for failing to respect social distancing. She was then placed in a cell in close quarters with 30 other women where she has a better than even chance of being infected.
The danger of sheltering is massive economic disruption that can take years to correct. Millions have lost their jobs and stocks have tanked. We simply can’t afford to shut down the country every time we experience a viral epidemic. The economic impact on Americans must be taken into account. "Let's not kill the free market in the process of killing the virus," warned Laura Ingraham on her Fox TV program. “American citizens are losing patience with overbearing martial-law-style orders,” says California Globe, “over what many say is a deliberate attempt to kill businesses and shut down the U.S. economy.” David Marcus in The Federalist adds: "What we are sacrificing by a policy of total lockdown for God knows how long is the livelihoods, dignity, and yes, in many cases lives of hundreds of millions of Americans."
Finally, does shelter in place violate our rights under the Constitution? The virus is being used as an excuse to accelerate government intrusion into our lives. The shelter decrees have violated the fundamental rights of tens of millions, writes Judge Andrew Napolitano in The Washington Times. “The fear of contagion gives government cover for its assaults,” he says. “One can see the paramount rejection of basic democratic and constitutional principles.” Political commentator Bill O’Reilly agrees. "Our individual freedoms are under assault from the virus,” says O’Reilly. “Do you like being told how to live and where you can go? Are you embracing the restrictions we are facing? They are a vivid message—this is what can happen all the time when big government rules." Attorney Daniel Horowitz is frightened. "Now that states are moving to indefinite lockdowns without presenting any evidence that this is needed, over and above the severe distancing, it’s past time for us to ask questions,” he says. “Placing Americans indefinitely under house arrest without any due process, transparency, time limit, guidelines, or checks and balances on a single executive is something that should shake us to our core.”
Thumbing his nose at the constitutionality question, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has suggested—as one of his anti-virus proposals—the GPS tracking of US citizens to enforce stay-at-home measures. Sounds like the old Soviet Union. “The real disease is bigger than the coronavirus,” writes Daniel Greenfield in FrontPage Magazine. “It’s a fatal illness called big government. Unlike the coronavirus, it has a total mortality rate. No society that has succumbed to it has ever survived."
There may be a further political motivation behind government anti-virus policies. “What’s the difference between the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak and the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak?” asks California Globe. “In 2009 Barack Obama was President, and in 2020 Donald Trump is President.
This leaves many to believe the complete shutdown of American society over questionable health concerns is having the desired effect—destroying Donald Trump and tanking the U.S. economy before the 2020 Presidential Election." Sen. Tom Cotton seems to agree. "[Pelosi and Schumer] are willing to risk your life, your job, and your savings for a radical, left-wing wish list that has nothing to do with this virus," says Cotton.
Even the police are upset that they have to enforce sheltering. "I do not discount the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic,” writes police officer Jack Dunphy in PJ Media. “But neither do I discount the genuine threat to liberty posed by the various orders, decrees, edicts, and mandates lately imposed by the nation’s governors, mayors, health commissioners, and every other sort of government functionary exercising their newly discovered power to limit the freedom of their fellow citizens."
It is time to end shelter in place before we live to regret it.
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski, formerly head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, warned that the ongoing lockdowns throughout the US and the rest of the world are almost certainly just prolonging the coronavirus outbreak rather than doing anything to truly mitigate it. He pointed out that even with enforced social distancing, the virus will still find ways to spread. Wittkowski said that the coronavirus could be exterminated if we permit most people to lead normal lives and shelter the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger passes. “With all respiratory diseases,” he said, “the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children.” On the subject of individual rights, Wittkowski said, “I think people in the United States and maybe other countries as well are more docile than they should be. People should talk with their politicians, question them, ask them to explain, because if people don’t stand up to their rights, their rights will be forgotten.”