Virus notes: Letter to the Covidiots

 MERCED (BLJ) –The Merced County Public Health Department on August 5, reported 4,760 cases of COVID-19 (222 new) and 60 deaths (9 new).

California on the morning of August 6 reported 524,722 cases (5,295 new) and 9,703 deaths (202 new).

The United States on the morning of August 6 reported 4,903,385 cases (53,271 new) and 160,402 deaths (1,274 new).

The global count on the morning of August 6 is 18,752,917 cases (173,302 new) and 706,342 deaths (54,064 new).

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We run the risk of allowing the Trump administration’s misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance in its response to the pandemic to wear us down. We don’t want to get the disease so we shelter in place, wear masks, observe 6 feet of physical distance from others and wash our hands frequently.

All this is immeasurably easier if one isn’t trying to raise children.

But sheltering in place as a senior also has its stresses, and the distances imposed by the pandemic can become real distances as friendships fray in the commotion of different responses that individuals display to the hard, simple discipline of being consistently careful.

Courage is not recklessness or bravado. Above all, it isn’t carelessness.

There is a kind of false courage, the bully’s courage, which conceives itself above an inferior foe, the general public for example, which wears masks and observes social distance when our bully boy, filled perhaps with liquid or pharmaceutical courage, does not. His false courage, temporarily topping off his fears and anxieties, dares you to say something about his strut. And your irritations are such that you are inclined to say something.

There is a word for such people. They are COVIDIOTS.

DON’T BE A COVIDIOT.

When you’re taking your demons for a walk in public, keep them on their leashes and maintain a safe distance from others.

And DO NOT claim some imaginary Constitutional right to endanger the lives of your community members, family, and fellow workers by not exercising the normal cautions required in a time of serious pandemic and in a place which is one of the 10 most dangerous in the nation, which your fellow Covidiots have made the worst pandemic hotspot in the world.

Perhaps, probably not because Covidiots don’t read, but maybe the first part of this article will open your minds.

4-30-30

Los Angeles Times

Op-Ed: Yes, the government can restrict your liberty to protect public health

By Erwin Chemerinsky

There have been very few Supreme Court cases involving the government’s power to deal with the spread of communicable diseases. The most relevant decision for today was issued in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts in 1905. In that case, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a state law requiring compulsory vaccinations against smallpox. The court declared, “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

The court explicitly rejected the claim that “liberty” under the Constitution includes the right of individuals to make decisions about their own health in instances where those decisions could endanger others. But the court also made clear that restrictions imposed by the government to control communicable diseases must have a “real or substantial relation” to protecting public health.

Under this standard, there is no doubt that quarantine, “shelter in place,” and closure requirements are constitutional as a way of stopping the spread of COVID-19, even though they restrict freedom. The court explicitly rejected the claim that “liberty” under the Constitution includes the right of individuals to make decisions about their own health in instances where those decisions could endanger others. But the court also made clear that restrictions imposed by the government to control communicable diseases must have a “real or substantial relation” to protecting public health.

Under this standard, there is no doubt that quarantine, “shelter in place,” and closure requirements are constitutional as a way of stopping the spread of COVID-19, even though they restrict freedom.

Throughout American history, quarantine orders have been upheld as valid exercises of the police power possessed by state and local governments. Not long after the Revolutionary War, Philadelphia imposed a quarantine to stop the spread of yellow fever. In 1799, Congress, by statute, recognized the power of states to impose quarantines. In 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that “a state, in the exercise of its police power, may establish quarantines against human beings, or animals, or plants.” Most recently, in 2016, a federal district court in New Jersey upheld a quarantine order for a nurse who had returned from Africa after treating Ebola patients…