Only with total cooperation can you reasonably contain the virus - some countries have succeeded at this already, and California is not far behind.
Don't. The Bay Areas infection numbers, despite their early exposure, are excellent. Early and aggressive shelter in place orders are to thank.
Everything else is noise.
> what rights are being violated?
"Right of the people peaceably to assemble" - US Constitution - the highest law of the land.
It may be stupid to assemble now (which is why i am staying at home), but that in no way makes actually forbidding it constitutional.
That's why the right to peaceably assemble doesn't mean you can, e.g., freely blockade hospital entrances. Public health quarantines have been recognized as a legitimate state power by the US Supreme Court consistently, in cases running back to 1824 (Gibbons v. Ogden.)
It's not even remotely productive to start from the "I have absolute rights due to the constitution" arguments.
And for the sake of us all, i hope that if the case were to be brought in front of SCOTUS, they'd correctly write that "yes pandemics suck and compliance is important, but constitution is more so. Local gvmnts are free to find other ways to do this, but a virus is no excuse for constitutional transgressions"
The first amendment has no limitations, except those outlined in it itself or in caselaw. None that applies to this situation, so for now, luckily, you are wrong.
> It's not even remotely productive to start from the "I have absolute rights due to the constitution" arguments.
WHAT? It saddens me to see views like these. Mostly I see them in people who never fought for their rights, and never lived in places lacking them. You may amend the constitution if you disagree with it, via a proper process, but discarding it as "not productive" is insulting
And you would be wrong, as this is the quintessential "shouting fire in a crowded theater" analogy. Free Speech is conditional, since at least 1969 when it last went to the SCOTUS. The reason it's unproductive to start from that space, is because today, the Constitution does not grant you unconditional rights. You don't have an unconditional right to own a gun either.
There was a few clear SCOTUS decisions on what limits there exist on 1st amendment, and movement limits weren't in there
Another area that speech has been restricted has been around espionage and wartime; it's clear that during wartime, our ability to speak becomes much more restricted, at least partially for security reasons. Again, the practical reason for this is that war can be an existential risk for a country, and generally, people are more than willing to give up their rights temporarily to avoid the risk of their entire nation being wiped out.
So, while I agree (to my limited knowledge; I'm just a speculating engineer) that there is no direct case law that bears on this, I do feel that my predictions on which side the SC would fall (unless the court was packed with Scalias) are reasonable.
There is little more for me to add so I think I will terminate my participation in this subthread.
This is what you stated, and now you are agreeing that there are conditions. If you now agree that there are conditions that these rights can be applied, I believe an actual pandemic would be reasonable as a condition to the first amendment.
The reason that talking with you doesn't look productive is that you're behaving like a fundamentalist here. You've got a very basic understanding of one document, and you've decided that your take is the perfect truth.
People who actually devote their lives to studying and practicing the law, on the other hand, have a much more nuanced perspective. Freedom of speech is indeed a right, but it's not absolute. Courts have found "time, place, and manner" restrictions perfectly constitutional, and have for as long as America has existed: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1023/time-place...
It seems very likely that the Supreme Court would side with "governments can restrict the movement of people during health emergencies especially if there is reasonable science supporting that". I guess we don't know unless they take up such a case.
My statements are purely practical; I've never "fought for my rights" or "lived in a place lacking them", but my ancestors did, and in ever sense, the conditions of my rights seem to be as unrestricted as is possible within a large nation that follows the rule of law.
The right to assembly has a significant explicit limitation in the text.
[0]https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-s-...
Every libertarian I know believes governments should provide intervention in these kinds of situations. If you don't, that makes you an anarchist (or whatever).
then you do not know any libertarians, or you have massively overstated their acceptance of these measures.
Having vested power in a single person to literally close the entirety of the economy, and arrest people for exercising basic rights is a violation of all things that should America Stands for. No libertarian would stand for arresting people out for a walk, threatening to arrest people for posting on Instagram, arresting people enjoying activity outside alone in ocean, arresting people if they sit in chair on the beach, but sitting in the same spot in the sand is ok, etc etc etc...
While some libertarians may accept the basic social distancing orders, even closing some events and gather thing, there is a mile long list of massive government overreach in every region and state including CA.
Everyone likes to hold America and other First world nations as "free" in contrast to Authoritarian States like China, but the line gets less defined every year, and every crisis
I am sure I will get zero support for my thoughts here, but if rights end when a crisis begins we have no rights at all. Today it is a pandemic that they have used to justify their authoritarian action, What will it be next, and how far will they push their power after seeing how well fear will enable them to cease control.
Too many people during this time are shortsighted, failing to see the bigger threat to liberty this precedent will bring.
I don't see any slippery slope or danger of totalitarian take over. The virus is inherently time-limited.
then you do not have a proper understanding or respect for history if you fail to recognize the dangers of this precedent.
Personally I would like to see some check put on governor and mayor emergency powers, limit them to 30-45 days then require a committee, judicial or legislature approval to continue to the orders. There also needs to be some kind of Due process or appeals process for individuals and business impacted by the orders, and IMO if the government is going to mandate a business close that should be considered a 5th amendment taking and the governments assumes liability for all lost revenue for the business.
I am not an big proponent of allowing a single office to have unlimited unchecked power even in a pandemic
The way that Emergency powers are written today is terrifying or rather should be terrifying to anyone that believes in individual liberty
I do, rights and liberty are easy to protect, defend and discuss in times of peace, prosperity and normalcy. However it is in times of crisis were protecting rights and liberty is most crucial
When it comes to rights, we always have to ask "what are the reasonable trade-offs?". There are no absolute rights, even in the U.S.
Most people believe it's clearly reasonable that we lock down our cities to prevent mass death. The economic pain is great, and it's very inconvenient for all, but it's much better than mass death.
You're entirely free to read/watch/do anything you want in your home, you can exercise, talk to anyone about anything you want, get food, take care of essential things.
You're not free to risk killing many people just so you can enjoy leisure activities. That would be privileging your personal liberty over the lives of your fellow citizens. And, incidentally, you would be depriving some of them of their personal liberty by virtue of killing them...
Does it bother you that you can't own significant quantities of radioactive material and carry them around while you're in public? Clearly laws forbidding this are an infringement of personal liberty. But they're an incredibly reasonable infringement so it doesn't bother you, I'd assume.
A democratic society should be governed by the people. We, The People, have decided that the lock downs are good. We have in effect demanded and endorsed them. So you're disagreeing with the majority of your fellow citizens, not some dictator.
For some unknown reason you believe these lock downs are unreasonable, without any clear rationale.
There seems to me to be an overreaction to this virus over other known health crisis, and for that matter other emergencies simply do to the unknown / novel nature of this event.
The other problem with your response is the pure assumption that a total lockdown of all citizens was the only option, and that anyone daring to suggest there may have been another more measured way is simply wanting to put "leisure activities" over peoples lives, the fact remains that several people have suggested alternative measures that could have been used, including isolated only those of the vulnerable population where more than 80% of the deaths are accounted for, and where outside of that vernable population COVID is less deadly than the normal flu. Do you propose these same lockdowns every flu season? after all the flu does cause "mass death" as you seem to define it every year so it must be a reasonable response to shut down the economy every flu season right?
You do understand that the lockdowns where never to prevent the transmission of the virus, but rather simply slow the rate of transmission to allow the health system to sick and not be overwhelmed.
I will not bother to address your reductio ad absurdum on radio active material as it holds no bearing on this conversation, but I will say my position on that would not be what you expect :)
>>For some unknown reason you believe these lock downs are unreasonable, without any clear rationale.
Well allow me to provide some Rationale then
1. There were / are viable less extreme measures that could have been taken
2. It is yet to be seen if the Lock Downs actually were effective, there is some data to suggest they were not, and simply stating "it would have been worse" is not evidence based. Some data suggests that COVID was already widely spread before the lockdowns even went into effect and a large part of the population was asymptotic or suffers very mild symptoms
3. There is no section of the federal or any state constitution I am aware of that reads "These rights can be suspended in a time of emergency" while I am aware that the courts have played mental gymnastics to carve out these exceptions, the fact remains these acts prove the constitution is powerless to prevent infringement of basic rights by government
4. The precedent set by these unprecedented orders will be used to infringe on rights of the population using thinner and thinner justifications for an "emergency", I can see a flu season being used to trigger a draconian response in a few years.
5. One of the bigger problems I have with the lock downs is the open ended nature of them, and the power to extend or lift them is in a single person, in a single branch of government with out limit, oversight or control. It may be needed for a governor to act quickly to get process started, but that should then need to be follow up with some other branch of government oversight no less than 30 days after a governor acts. This is not a dictatorship and we should not devolve into one in a crisis
1. That the lock downs were unnecessary/ineffective.
And since the evidence and experts disagree with you, it seems incredibly dubious that you're right. As with climate change denial, there is always some minority taking the contrarian view, but the scientific consensus should still rule the day.
And even if it does turn out to be true, it was still the scientific consensus during an emergency, so it made sense to do it as the best available option. We can't undo the lock downs and we're already working to phase them out. So there's really no cogent argument here.
Also, the comparisons to the flu are a sign you don't have your facts straight. Expert models predicted the potential for millions of dead Americans without intervention. And it seems entirely backed up by the actual data we got from New York.
You also don't seem to understand that flattening the curve reduces death, it doesn't just spread it out over time.
2. That the lock downs are bad for freedom.
This is entirely based on the slippery slope argument. You can't actually point to any governmental abuse, at all. Every government official seems to be acting entirely in good faith across a massive country. Which is why no reasonable person is worried about this. The people protesting the lock downs are a tiny minority of extremists and contrarians.
You have to ask yourself "am I being too extreme in my views, or is every educated/informed person blind to the danger?" and it's pretty obvious which of these is the case.
There is simply no justified cause for concern that lock downs are going to become a tool of oppression. The lock downs are happening with the consent of the people and the courts.
And it's extremely time-limited, not open-ended. There is absolutely no way the lock downs will go on indefinitely. And there is no way they will happen again without the consent of the people. There is simply no reasonable cause for alarm.
P.S.
I would expect your position on allowing people to poison their fellow citizens with radioactive material might be similar to your position on poisoning people with a deadly virus. That would be consistent with the extremist views you're espousing.
The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation
The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.
... If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-i...
>>We can't undo the lock downs and we're already working to phase them out. So there's really no cogent argument here.
This is simply not true, there are lots of people claiming we should remained locked down for alot longer with many many governors continuing the lock downs when they should be phasing them now, this main link in this thread is about extending the lockdown and several people pointed out the unrealistic "targets" of the Bay area for them to "phase out" the lockdowns
>You can't actually point to any governmental abuse, at all
I guess that depends on your definition of abuse. Lets go through some of the items I am aware of in the US that has occured by the government that I consider abuse
1. CA Police arresting a man in the middle of the ocean by him self
2. police harassing old people on the beach because they dared sit in a chair instead of directly on the sand
3. WI Police threatening a teen child with arrest over a instagram post
4. RI Police stopping all people with a NY Plate for questioning at the border "Papers Please" style
5. RI Governor sending the national guard door to door to question people about their movements, and activities
6. MI Governor banning the sale of gardening supplies while still allowing lottery sales because she need to protect state revenue
7. CT police using drones to monitor people activities to ensure they are conforming to social distancing
8. KY CPS investigating people with large numbers of children for child abuse for failing to "social distance" with each other
9. TX creating a COVID Task force to go undercover to crack down on home based businesses during the lock down
10. Many States banning the sale of Self Protection Tools as "non-essential"
I could probably list dozens or hundreds more abuses by state and local authorities, that is with out getting in the arbitrary definitions of "essential business" many states have come up with, which many of them seem to be purposefully to aid political supporters and ensure the business owned by those supporters were essential, or hypocritical actions like the Chicago Mayor claiming her getting a hair cut was "essential activity" since she is a public figure but it was non-essential for everyone else, the rules for thee but not for me position has been rampant through out this event
>>Every government official seems to be acting entirely in good faith across a massive country.
If you believe that then our definition of "good faith" is very different or you are not paying attention
> For your safety you will do what you are told ## it is true, that safety line is common to talk to civilians by enforcers, even when that is not at all what is happening.. and also when it is partially involved, such as evacuation orders due to fire danger
> I thought the brainiacs in silicon valley could do math ## the person is not a math person, and is somewhat embarassed by that, as Silicon Valley math people are clearly a big deal for the society right now
> forgot how to stand up for your rights ## the person is trying to emphasize your own volition here, not following orders blindly
> I expect all you young sheltering in place ## this person feels older than most readers here
> do exactly what your government says ## this warning is central to the emotion and appeal to individuality
> says next time ## this is not an isolated thing, it will come up again and perhaps a lot, over the next years+
> do something for your safety ## safety is an excuse for removing liberty
-- It is not well-written or even good judgement necessarily, but I took the time to annotate it because these are serious things over time, from a legal rights point of view, and also huge landmines emotionally for those that deeply value self-determintation.
This reply does not support or reject the post content -- it is more to say, look at this, do not dismiss it quickly.