The Coronavirus vs The Constitution

The Coronavirus Vs. The Constitution - Part I
The View from the Middle

As I try to honestly evaluate what we, as a country, have done in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, I must question much of our government’s actions and most of the public’s reaction. We have all been driven by faulty models that originally predicted one to two million deaths in the US as a result of the virus. Then the models predicted between 100,000 to 240,000 deaths, and now the latest projection is for about 60,000 Americans to die by August of this year. That’s a lot of deaths, but let’s try to put that into perspective.

In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed 700,000 people in the US and about 50 million around the world. That was when the US population was just over 100 million so that would be the equivalent of 2.2 million deaths in the US alone today, and Woodrow Wilson didn’t enact one stay-at-home order. In fact, he sent boatloads of our troops to Europe to fight in the WWI and probably spread that virus to Europe. In 1957 and 1968 the Asian Flu and then the Hong Kong Flu each killed 100,000 people in America when we had half the population we have today. I was a junior in high school in 1968 and I don’t remember any lockdowns or business closings or any of the draconian governmental responses that we have had today.

Let’s get a little closer to today. Just two years ago, the seasonal flu killed 80,000 Americans according to the CDC, and do you remember any massive governmental restrictions? Do you remember the death count clocks on all the news shows? Do you remember any nationwide business closures or the need for any trillion-dollar rescue spending bills?

Let’s also put some balance in our reporting. According the Dr. Fauci, from the President’s Coronavirus task force, the mortality rate for Covid-19 is 1.0%, which means that 99% of the people who are infected with this virus will survive. Also, using Dr. Fauci’s projected mortality rate and the latest death toll model we can calculate that about six million people in the United States will be infected with this virus. That sounds like a big number, but it means that only 2% of Americans will even be infected with this virus, and only .02% (that’s two hundredths of one percent) of Americans will die. In other words, 99.8% of Americans will NOT die from this virus. Those are pretty good odds. Is there anyone covering that aspect of this story?

The Coronavirus Vs. The Constitution - Part II
The View from the Middle

Our founders were not expecting or promising a “risk-free” life in America. In fact, as Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence he told his fellow signers, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.” All the founders put their lives at risk, and so did the American people in general. Eight thousand Americans died during the Revolutionary War, and you say, that’s not so many, but that was one percent of the entire country’s population back then. That would be the equivalent of 3.3 million people dying today. But our founders and even our everyday citizens back then were willing to take that risk and fight the most powerful military power in the world at the time for the freedoms and liberty that the new American experiment promised. I’m sure they would not easily give up any of those freedoms today, even for Covid-19.

Today we live in a risk averse society that has been built on a relatively peaceful world (no world wars), the modern 24-hour news cycle and political manipulation. Rahm Emanuel, X-mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s Chief of Staff, let the cat out of the bag in 2008 when he said, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” He probably regrets saying that out loud, because he was finally admitting to this disgusting, manipulative strategy of extortion. In other words, he (and I believe all politicians) are willing to take advantage of our citizens when they are desperate or frightened or both to advance their ideological agendas. And if a real crisis isn’t handy, just create one.

And along comes the Coronavirus. I’m not denying that the Coronavirus is a bad thing. It is a challenge that we are all having to face. Will it put some of our citizens at risk? Absolutely, but does it require us all to give up many of our fundamental freedoms to mitigate the risk or put millions of small businesses out of business? That is at least a question that we should be asking ourselves. We should also be asking if our government even has the power to do many of the things they have done in the face of this pandemic? I might suggest that it does not.

We have trampled all over our God-given rights during this challenge. The first amendment to The Constitution guarantees the right to peaceably assemble in addition to the right to the free exercise of religion, and it doesn’t say, “unless there’s a virus out there somewhere.” Yet, our government has prohibited meetings of groups larger than 10 which prevents most churches from gathering. Does the government even have the right to do that? The 4th Amendment protects American citizens from unreasonable seizure of houses, papers and effects, which includes buildings and businesses. The 5th Amendment says that the government cannot deprive a citizen of life, liberty or property without due process, yet the government has forced millions of businesses to close their doors. This deprives the owners of their very livelihoods. Can our federal or state governments legally do that?

The Coronavirus Vs. The Constitution - Part III
The View from the Middle

Bill Barr, our country’s Attorney General, is beginning to question the government’s authority to deny basic civil rights to our citizens. How long can our government demand that people stay in their homes? He compared the current stay at home orders to a country-wide house arrest. How long can our government forbid businesses from operating? And then you have the queen of governmental overreach, Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Her stay-at-home order allows no public gatherings of any size. Really!? Michiganders are prohibited from travel between their own homes, if they are lucky enough to own more than one, and if you are already shopping in a store, you can’t buy paint, seeds or any home improvement products. Prove to me that any of those restrictions will save a single life. I heard her next move will be to force the people of Michigan to stand on their heads for four hours a day. It has nothing to do with the virus. She just wants to see if she can get anyone to do it.

The arguers for unlimited government power would say that the “Welfare” clause in the Constitution allows all of this, but I believe that we are stretching the Welfare clause beyond reasonability. What is the Welfare Clause? It is a four-word phrase in the preamble of The Constitution that declares that our founders established our Constitution in order to “promote the general welfare” of the country. It does not say that we can violate The Bill of Rights in the process.

Can and should the government educate the American people about the potential risks of this virus? Absolutely! Can they recommend frequent hand-washing, wearing masks in public and even social distancing? Sure. And, if our government had taken this less intrusive approach to the mitigation of this virus and stopped there, would the results we are experiencing today be any different? The real answer to that question is, “we don’t know”. Take a look at Sweden, who took a “laissez-faire / herd immunity” approach to the virus. Their deaths per million are not that much different than ours and are way below Italy, Spain, France and Belgium who have all been much more restrictive in their management of this disease. Could we have executed that strategy even better than Sweden and gotten the same results we have today, but saved millions of businesses and trillions in spending? We’ll never know.

A new NBC/WSJ poll says that 60% of Americans are afraid that we will open up the economy too soon. That’s not surprising given the 24-7 onslaught by the media to scare the hell out of everyone, but let’s dig into that number. First, it says that 40% of Americans are sick of this panic-living and want to get back to work. Many people in that 40% have lost their jobs, have no savings and are worried about their ability to provide the necessities (shelter and food) for their families. That 40% represents a lot of people and that number is only going to get bigger. We should also be asking what percent of that 60% are still employed. Sure, the media wants to take it slow. They’re all still working, getting paid and this is all they’re covering. Sure, Nancy Pelosi and her double-wide freezer full of ice cream wants this lockdown to continue. She is not only unaffected but is out of touch and tone-deaf at the same time. When she was told that, “The children have no milk” her reply was, “let them eat ice cream.”

Let’s get this country back to work so Nancy doesn’t have to continue suffering from self-inflicted brain freezes. When your gym opens up, go there immediately and start working out again. When restaurants open up, go out and support those small business owners who have been dying for the last two months. Brenda and I already have our reservation on May 4th when Arkansas is supposed to open up those businesses. It is time to put the Coronavirus hysteria behind us and get back to living!! Remember, no matter whose numbers you use, more than 99.9% of you will not die from this virus.