Governments worldwide are censoring information about Coronavirus,
obstructing testing, slowing cures, falsely imprisoning millions, destroying
trillions of dollars of wealth, and killing untold thousands with dictatorial
measures.
As these words are written, governors
throughout America have issued orders (without resort to any statutes or
legislation) shuttering thousands of businesses and terminating tens of
millions of workers. Some 70 million Americans are now imprisoned in
their residences, needing government permission even to walk to a park.
The U.S. Justice Department is calling openly calling for indefinite detentions
and a suspension of habeas corpus.
The United States is under the strictest
level of martial law in history. All borders are sealed. Tanks and
armored personnel carriers now roll through the streets of New York City, San
Diego and other cities.
All
of this is in response to COVID-19, the “Coronavirus,” a disease whose
mortality statistics are almost certainly far below three percent for all who
contract it.
The sheer folly and carnage
of government overreaction to this threat will go down as unparalleled in
American history. Social science has established few correlations
stronger than those linking high unemployment rates with higher rates of
suicide, homicide, overdoses, alcoholism, and mental illness. Studies
have found that every 1 percent increase in unemployment likely increases violent crime by 14.3 per 100,000
residents, increases property crime by 1.8 percent
and increases opioid death rates by 3.6
percent. A 2015 study found that the unemployment associated with the
economic crises of 2008 likely contributed to some 5,000 excess suicides in
the following years.
Yet now, in 2020, the world’s
governments are mandating astronomical unemployment and social isolation—in the
name of preventing deaths. These government responses to COVID-19 will almost certainly kill far more people than the dreaded
disease itself.
Perhaps
saddest of all is that the U.S. government response has been something of a
copy of draconian responses by the world’s most tyrannical dictators.
The
COVID-19 outbreak is said to have started in the Wuhan Province of China,
although this is contested in some circles. The Chinese government’s
reaction to Coronavirus was both Orwellian and totally ineffective.
Thousands died unnecessarily.
According to The Guardian,
“China’s response to the outbreak included a month-long government cover-up in
Wuhan . . . that led to the rapid spread of the coronavirus.”
Chinese police punished and imprisoned doctors for “spreading rumours”
about the virus. The government denied for months that the virus was
spread by human to human contact. Officials suppressed reports of
potential cases and turned people with symptoms away from hospitals.
When the Chinese government could no longer
contain the “rumours,” it ordered the entire province of Wuhan locked down, in
the middle of the night with an eight-hour gap before the order went into
effect. Thousands fled.
The government then ordered 50 million people quarantined. It was
the largest prison camp in history—a record that lasted only a month and a half
before it was surpassed by regions of the United States.
When panic over the virus first hit American shores in January,
officials at the FDA and CDC stymied private and academic development of
diagnostic tests while pushing defective government tests. The U.S.
government stopped Seattle’s Dr. Helen Chu from testing for coronavirus because
Chu’s lab “was not certified as a clinical laboratory under
regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.”
Hundreds of Americans will likely die
as a direct result of the CDC and FDA decrees in Seattle. It was not until
March 17 that the FDA first gave emergency approval to any private company to
distribute nongovernment COVID-19 tests to hospitals. (The agency still
prohibits distribution to private individuals.)
“Health
officials” have always sought to monopolize testing within government (and
government-certified hospital) ranks. And these impulses have caused the
deaths of untold thousands. (AIDS and HIV ravaged the U.S. for three
decades before the U.S. government finally permitted—in 2012—a private, at-home
HIV test. Prior to that, the stigma of that disease undoubtedly kept
hundreds of thousands from getting tested at government-controlled
clinics. Thousands undoubtedly died as a result.)
The U.S. government has also
banned production of nonapproved protective masks until manufacturers submit detailed applications to the CDC’s
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). (Meanwhile
government inspectors are grounded from travel to inspect the manufacturing
facilities.)
The
U.S. government (and state governments within the U.S.) followed the Chinese
model of COVID-19 response to the letter. Just as in China, American
officials (1) enforced regulations which stalled and obstructed all efforts by
private, local or academic medical experts to test or report on the virus, and
then (2) overreacted to public concerns by implementing Orwellian measures to
illustrate the government’s supposed control.
Today, Americans are being
told they may not gather in groups larger than ten. Many large families
are, in fact, in violation of such decrees. Chicago’s mayor has ordered citations and arrests for
those who go outside for exercise. On March 26, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti
announced that “nonessential” businesses which defy shutdown orders would have their water and utilities shut
off. (The designation of whether a business is essential or nonessential
is known to change in seconds during press conferences or phone conversations.)
As I
write these words, virtually every school, university, library, food court, gym
and civic center has been closed by government decree (not laws, codes, or
statutes, mind you). And while politicians spoke in velvet tones about
health and fresh air, they have shuttered every available national park and
almost every campground.
As
always, those within government, and prominent pro-government celebrities, are
getting preferential treatment for testing and treatment. And while
governments are locking down millions of inhabitants, demanding government
permission documents for all travel, and banning gatherings of more than a few
people, these bans do not apply to government itself. Cops and National
Guard units now march through the streets by the score.
In Italy, the government is
using Coronavirus as an excuse to build ever-more expansive facial-recognition
and social media databases and surveillance systems. The Italian government now scours over Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter posts in search of curfew or quarantine violators.
Stay
tuned!
Dr.
Roger Roots [send
him mail] is an attorney who worked on both the Ryan Bundy defense
team in Oregon and the Cliven Bundy defense team in Nevada. Roger is the only
lawyer who observed all four Bundy trials beginning in October 2016. (He missed
seeing only the second Oregon trial in February 2017 because it conflicted with
the first Nevada trial.) Roger is also a founder of Lysander Spooner
University, www.lysanderspooneruniversity.com and
author of The Conviction Factory: The Collapse of America's
Criminal Courts.