The lockdowns effectively suspend constitutional rights for the entire population. The effectively end freedom of assembly and freedom of worship. They severely restrict freedom of movement and free speech and place the entire population under a form of house arrest. Long-term closures that make many businesses worthless effectively amount to destruction of property by the government without compensation.
Clearly similar actions based on race, religion, sex, etc. would be immediately ruled as unconstitutional.
Is there some line in the sand on what the government can do to the entire population?
For example, seasonal flu can result in similar numbers of deaths. According to the CDC, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed 116,000 Americans with no business or school closures. That would correspond to about 200,000 deaths based today’s population, which is about three times the official death toll from the coronavirus. Are governments free to impose similar lockdowns in the future based on seasonal flu?
Is a totalitarian state constitutional so long as it claims some justification for the actions based on public health or safety?
The effectively end freedom of assembly and freedom of worship.
Freedom of Assembly has always been subject to licensing. If a church caught fire on Sunday morning and the police forbade worshipers from entry would that be unconstitutional?
Where is “Freedom of Movement” found in the constitution? Article and Section?
Thing is it doesn’t stop unless there is a vaccine. There are plenty of scientists already calling for it to roar back in the fall. What then another shutdown? One can hope for a vaccine i do, but it may or may not happen, and if it does when? No one knows.
People can prove me wrong later but I think a better approach would have been to isolate (protect) the elderly and those most at risk. The rest of the population would have already developed a herd immunity by now and it would have been safer to go out.
The lockdowns are allegedly based on science, but 66% of hospitalized New Yorkers stayed home and got the virus anyway:
Based on that statistic and the lockdown logic, the government should be able to condemn every multifamily building in New York and evict the residents since clearly the buildings are all unsafe. The residents would be safer sleeping in a tent in the park.
This weekend was the 75th anniversary of VE day; I guess we should have just surrendered to the Nazis to avoid the risks from war. Avoiding risk trumps freedom by today’s logic.
Yes, there is a saying among structural engineers, “earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do.”
I suspect there is a similar situation with the coronavirus. Science shows that sunlight and fresh air prevent infections from respiratory viruses. Sunlight also produces vitamin D, which is important to the immune system. Both sunlight and fresh air are in short supply inside New York apartment buildings especially in the winter.
The best thing for New Yorkers to do is to turn off the heat and A/C and open the windows to let in fresh air and sunlight.
Your analogy is flawed. Fire is not contagious. There is no danger in you getting burned by a fire in a grocery store and transmitting that burn and fire to everyone in your church.
There is also no danger of getting burned in a snowstorm. So what? Walking into a burning church can kill you. These days, walking into a church full of people can kill you.
BTW- Fire can be contagous. If a person is on fire and runs into you, it can set you on fire. That is contagion.
