But what about the US? If all government is corrupt, if all taxes are sin, if all leaders on the other side are traitors to the cause, the people will never respect those in charge. The people don't obey the "orders" nor follow advice. Then they wrap themselves in the flag and actively work against the measures in the name of freedom. That cultural chicken has now come home to roost.
This state supreme court could have delayed. Cases take years to get to state supreme courts. They could easily have pushed this case until after this disease has come and gone. Instead they pushed this through in order to get a quick victory over a governor with whom they disagree politically.
This is a rather extremist take on the issue. You can be against unlawful orders while still obeying the scientific advisories. Take MA for example, where we have a stay-at-home advisory, not order. This advisory has reduced the average number of close contacts of diagnosed COVID-19 people from 10 to 2, while still respecting civil liberties.
The model you preach, one of trust, starts with the government trusting its citizens. Otherwise you end up with tyranny.
For the handful of people I see clearly flaunting the restrictions here, I feel like more often than not they have decent personal reasons for doing so, and I don't think it's my place to stick my nose in that.
A free person does not take orders from the state, nor from anyone. A free person has a right to weigh advice and conscience on his own terms, and negotiate his externalities with society.
This hypothetical "free person" is then also responsible for the results of their actions and for any oversights or vulnerabilities caused by their "free" status.
There are very good reasons we allow ourselves to be part of a society or country - people are always better equipped to survive in groups.
The problem with positioning one's self as a "free person" is that most people advocating this don't comprehend how they benefit from being part of a country or people. Because they don't understand or identify those benefits, they are entirely unwilling to accept the lack of them which is the case if they're entirely "free".
Essentially, they want to have their cake and eat it too - all the benefits of belonging to a modern civilization with no sacrifice of freedom, possessions, or possibilities.
They usually have an ego that allows them to believe they're special for being a person that recognizes the desire to be "free" when the truth is that other people do recognize that desire but also that it's not possible to be entirely free without giving up the benefits of belonging to a group.
Thus,they view themselves as exceptional because they understand that they should be free, when in truth they're exceptional because they're ignorant.
How do you balance that with another person's right to live? If you as a free person decide "F it, I don't want to stay cooped up despite my positive diagnosis." Is that fair to someone you then infect out in public?
That cultural chicken is still a massive net win; I'd still much rather live in America and get coronavirus rather than live in China and get black-bagged someday because of my refusal to take authorities seriously.
Pretty much no crisis since the founding of America has "these people have too much personal independence and power" been more of a problem than part of the solution. Indeed, most of the times independence was diagnosed as a problem the solution was worse than the disease. The government-coordinated response to 9/11 remains substantially more damaging than any other aspect of that fiasco.
At the risk of potentially misunderstanding what you meant, there's a yawning chasm between "freedom to die from COVID-19 because public health orders are affronts to liberty" and "extra-judicially kidnapped by one's own government."
I'd much rather live in Sweden or Germany, where people have sufficient trust in their government and a massive social safety net to catch employees who have to be out of work for health reasons--ANY health reasons, but COVID specifically in this instance--and we're able to trust that our fellow residents will act reasonably without forcing others back to work, than in America where the least-powerful and least-well-off of us have the cover of unemployment payments ripped away because some flag-wrapped know-betters demand Golden Corral reopen for buffet service after getting a haircut.
Australian deaths per million = 3.92
US deaths per million = 228.5
And the US number is likely to go to 500 in the next two months whilst in some Australia states it looks like COVID-19 is fully eradicated.
US 260 deaths per million
UK 499
France 404
Netherlands 322
Germany (Kudos!) 94.8
The US is not doing badly at all.
1) Individual behavior changed prior to the lockdowns (people don't want to die)
2) The government appears generally too incompetent to figure out how to lower R0 low enough to eradicate the virus
3) Since everyone can see that the govt is fucking this up, the marginal utility of hard lockdowns becomes less than the marginal pain. Some people will socialize, go to restaurants, etc. but...
4) It probably won't be more than a 50-75% return to normality because people don't want to die, and risk preferences vary so some will remain cautious. This will, crush small businesses, restaurants, bars, leisure, etc.
So since the govt is too incompetent to bring the virus to actual 0, then formal lockdowns don't matter because you're not getting rid of the virus anyway and raising them doesn't matter much either, because you're not going back to normal.
Point #1 was reinforced by looking at OpenTable data as well. de Blasio told people to go to restaurants, and on that same day he urged people to congregate in close quarters, reservations were down 34% year over year and had been trending down for 2 weeks.
People aren't stupid despite what the media reports, picking out groups of people to prove a point they want to push.
Furthermore, the lockdowns moved the Overton window for a lot of people, hammering it in their head that they need to practice social distancing. It's not likely going to get any stronger with government-mandated half-measure lockdowns continuing.
Like when you say the government is fucking things up, what are talking about here. Federal, state, city level? Because they each have approached the pandemic very differently and it’s unfair to put them all under the same umbrella. I’m pretty happy with the way my local government has responded. It hasn’t been perfect, but I also don’t expect them to deal with a once-in-a-century pandemic without hiccups.
I know at least here in the US it’s common to paint “the government” as incompetent, and overpaid. But when parts of the population are angrily protesting that they can’t get haircuts and flying to FL to party during spring break, it’s no wonder it hasn’t been easy to get this under control. I don’t envy the positions of some government officials.
And the way it is done just showd how the US is going bananas:
> Republicans who brought the lawsuit had asked the justices to side with them but to stay their ruling for about a week so legislators and Evers could work out a new plan to deal with the pandemic.
> The justices declined to do that and had their ruling take effect immediately. ...
> With no COVID-19 policies in place, bars, restaurants and concert halls are allowed to reopen — unless local officials implement their own restrictions. That raises the prospect of a patchwork of policies, with rules varying significantly from one county to the next.
Because without a lockdown order you (may) need to send them to school.
(depends on legality of homeschool in your jurisdiction, most of Europe forbids it, also depends on your ability to provide it)
Or a job/employer who requires physical presence. Hello, Elon!
There is no universe where that was ever going to happen absent herd immunity. It was never a declared goal by any major government and I doubt you could find a single quote from a qualified professional suggesting that is a realistic approach.
This isn’t the rule of law. It’s a cop out.
The problem is leaders had insufficient authorised powers. The solution to that isn’t to ignore the law. It’s to change it. Have the debate about who can activate quarantine under what grounds and in which circumstances, pass the bill and enumerate those powers.
Playing devil’s advocate, the precedent of a single leader having the power to place millions under effective house arrest with limited checks or balances is ripe for abuse.
How’s that working out for terrorism via the PATRIOT Act? People are rightly suspicious of granting sweeping powers to the government in “special circumstances.” There’s ALWAYS the threat of a pandemic, it’s not stretch to assume these “emergency powers” become activated indefinitely, sorta like how these lockdowns are continuing indefinitely.
>The people don't obey the "orders" nor follow advice. Then they wrap themselves in the flag and actively work against the measures in the name of freedom.
I'm strongly against big government, disagree with most R's and D's, will gladly wrap myself in the flag and I'm still quarantining for the most part. Just because you support freedom doesn't mean you're ignorant to this pandemic or methods to reduce spread. It just means you're protective of your rights because government has a very long history of using these kind of opportunities to infringe on them.
The other countries you speak about have already lost their rights, or never had them to begin with.
>Some rights we have voluntarily abrogated in order to meet what we believe to be more important responsibilities
This would be handled by our 10th amendment rights.
So I'm looking for a source of what rights Brits have and it's sort of difficult to understand... This [0] outlines several dates of ratification but I'm not really sure which currently apply. I figure at least these [1] apply but maybe you can give me better information. After looking at some of these articles of rights, I'm not overly impressed, most of these "rights" have asterisks on them. Not to mention how often these say "necessary in a democratic society" when talking about the restrictions, as if they know you're not going to be convinced when reading it.
> Article 10: 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
> 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Notice how the conditions are vague, ambiguous and longer than the right itself? That's going to be a big fat no from me, bob.
An interesting difference with the American Bill of Rights is that it's largely full of implied rights, as it doesn't expressly grant rights to people, rather it's written in the form of "government cannot do xyz".
> Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The end. No asterisks, no vague conditions, no ambiguity.
[0] https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/what-are-human-rights... [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/contents
If you have only "the rights we want" then your rights are subject to the whims of the majority.
In America our tradition of civil liberties protected the Illinois Nazis' freedom of speech as they marched through Skokie, celebrating the enemies of America who, within living memory, had waged war and killed millions of our citizens. The exercise meant as an affront to our nation and everything it values. We celebrated it, because if our worst enemies can have rights we don't like, then everyone can have rights.
In the UK, you can't even tolerate Dankula, and people think it's wonderful and good that he was fined for the nazi pug incident, and no one has really has rights unless they're popular. You'd think incidents like that would wave a few red flags, given that your nations' checkered moral history includes multi-century exercises in the deliberate oppression of your religious enemies.
New Zealand is widely regarded as the most free country, and they also don’t have coronavirus.
Freedom House has the US at 86, most of Western Europe in the high 90s.
https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2020
While I am not going to say the US is an undemocratic hellhole, after all a score of 86 is respectable, saying that countries that score significantly higher "lost their rights" is unlikely to be correct.
A pointed example of this is the criminal justice system, where people in the US have the right to stay silent, talk to a lawyer, etc, but still get screwed sideways with profoundly unjust outcomes due to plea bargaining, mandatory minimums, etc.
If I understand correctly, the winning side asked for a delay (in a different form than you're thinking). They wanted the case decided, ruled on, with the ruling to take effect a week after the decision, so that the governor and the legislature would have time to work something out. That is, they wanted the governor to have to follow the proper procedures to continue the stay-at-home order, and wanted the court to give time for that to happen, because they didn't actually oppose the stay-at-home order, just the way it was done.
The court didn't do that. It revoked the stay-at-home order, starting right now, not a week from now. That's something neither side asked for. That's either the court following its own agenda, or the court being stupid. I'm not sure which.
In the U.S. executive orders simply don't and can't have the force of law without the support of statutory law, not relative to civilians[0]. If you want a law, it needs to be passed as a statute by the appropriate legislature and must become law via all the usual mechanisms.
It's not that hard to pass emergency laws with sunsets in the very near future. So even if a given State's legislature is skeptical of covid-19's severity, they might nonetheless be amenable to a brief grant of emergency powers and see what happens.
Governors or the President acting alone to impose emergency statute-like law? That's not well received in the U.S., whether by people or courts, and there are very strong precedents in this regard[0].
That has nothing to do with corruption or taxes, and everything to do with long-established, well-thought-out, constitutional law. Yes, we're talking about constitutional law based on past skepticism of government, but that does not imply current skepticism (though it's true there's plenty of it). Also, the U.S. Constitution's requirement that State governments be (small-r) republican almost certainly extends the constraints on the President's EO power to the States' Governors. (Though, admittedly, the Supreme Court has ruled the Republican Government Guarantee clause non-justiciable, that was during the 19th century in a case that was clearly for Congress to decide, and the Court erred in saying that the clause was simply non-justiciable as opposed to certain cases not being justiciable. In a case about the validity and enforcability of gubernatorial EOs, the Court might well rule that the clause does mean that Governors cannot impose emergency rules without statutory support. Certainly that seems like a reasonable interpretation.)
> ... the people will never respect those in charge. ...
This was a decision by a court, not a question of whether the people support their governments. This state high court decision tells you practically nothing about how the people of Wisconsin feel about the measures that the Court struck down.
[0] E.g., the Truman era steel cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngstown_Sheet_%26_Tube_Co._... https://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/constitutional-law/const...
> In the U.S. executive orders simply don't and can't have the force of law without the support of statutory law, not relative to civilians[0]. If you want a law, it needs to be passed as a statute by the appropriate legislature and must become law via all the usual mechanisms.
This isn't true for many reasons including: the federal government controls a lot of what happens in the country indirectly and executive orders can decide what the law means (even if that meaning goes against what the law intended). Executive orders can for example suspend immigration. That absolutely affects civilians in an extremely practical way. More fundamentally, this kind of statement totally ignores how the legal system in the US works practically. Yes, there are laws, but laws are vague and must be interpreted. The federal government makes rules that interpret laws. These rules are what the law "is" practically. There is wide disagreement about what rules a particular law allows or doesn't allow. Executive orders can and do change these rules.
> That has nothing to do with corruption or taxes, and everything to do with long-established, well-thought-out, constitutional law. Yes, we're talking about constitutional law based on past skepticism of government
This is completely and utterly false! You shouldn't say these things without reading the opinion. Neither side made this argument at all and the court narrowly ruled that the rulemaking process had not been followed correctly.
> Also, the U.S. Constitution's requirement that State governments be (small-r) republican
There is no such requirement. This was also not about federal constitutional law, it was about the constitution of Wisconsin.
> extends the constraints on the President's EO power to the States' Governors.
Absolutely not. Each state has its own constitution, the federal constitution says no such thing at all. Also this case was not about an executive order!
> the Court might well rule that the clause does mean that Governors cannot impose emergency rules without statutory support
Again, please read the opinion before you say such things. The main argument was that some details of the law had not been followed.
> This was a decision by a court, not a question of whether the people support their governments
Only in the narrowest sense. It was a decision by a party, not a court. Republicans put their judges in power and the Republican judges made a decision. In that sense the US is absolutely unlike any other democracy in the world.
executive orders can decide what the law means
>>Also, the U.S. Constitution's requirement that State governments be (small-r) republican
There is no such requirement
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, ..."
I doubt many in Wisconsin are interested in the constitutional subtleties, just as they're not interested in how the "spontaneous" activism and protests have been coordinated by astroturfing.
The bottom line is that this will be marketed as a blow for individual freedom against oppressive government interference, and that marketing frame will be an expedient and manipulative PR position which will result in many avoidable deaths.
Worse, it will also do very little to keep the economy running, because the real economic problems are going to happen upstream, and states have virtually no influence over what happens there. (Which on its own should be enough to expose the lie that "individual freedom" as a magic fetish against economic catastrophe is even a possibility in this situation.)
> This isn't true for many reasons including: the federal government controls a lot of what happens in the country indirectly and executive orders can decide what the law means (even if that meaning goes against what the law intended). Executive orders can for example suspend immigration. That absolutely affects civilians in an extremely practical way. More fundamentally, this kind of statement totally ignores how the legal system in the US works practically. Yes, there are laws, but laws are vague and must be interpreted. The federal government makes rules that interpret laws. These rules are what the law "is" practically. There is wide disagreement about what rules a particular law allows or doesn't allow. Executive orders can and do change these rules.
The President most definitely cannot promulgate Executive Orders that have the force of law without supporting statutory law from Congress. There is no argument about this in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence.
Presidential power is highest in military and foreign policy, and at its lowest in domestic policy. Immigration falls into foreign policy. Also, there's two plus centuries of statutes that delegate some Congressional powers to the Executive, such as tariff powers.
> > Also, the U.S. Constitution's requirement that State governments be (small-r) republican
> There is no such requirement. This was also not about federal constitutional law, it was about the constitution of Wisconsin.
This was addressed by other commenters.
> > This was a decision by a court, not a question of whether the people support their governments
> Only in the narrowest sense. It was a decision by a party, not a court. Republicans put their judges in power and the Republican judges made a decision. In that sense the US is absolutely unlike any other democracy in the world.
That is an outrageous take. The justices in question are elected, not nominated. (IIRC there's a nomination-then-election system in Wisconsin.)
The U.S. is a republic, which means it has stringent procedural rules. Some aspects of American governance are very democratic, some are less, and some are practically not -- that's how it was setup in 1787-1789, and all of that has remained essentially unchanged since then. None of this is new.
Republicans put their judges in power
Excellent comment, just one thing bothered me: even more insipid then the above is the "all politicians are crooks" cynicism.
"Anyway you look at it you lose..." Yes, even Mssr. Simon....
Postponing this ruling until years down the line would render it meaningless. It's a distinctly unamerican stance you're espousing, as our system of checks and balances is central to our governance and our way of life.
Wait, in France and Belgium, the police is coming after your during lockdown. Think: road checkups, city patrols, etc. Fines are being sent left and right and people ended up in jail for breaking the lockdown too many times.
We also see various politicians to take up opposite positions regarding restrictions. Mainly between two state prime ministers, Söder in Bavaria and Laschet in NRW. The former pushed restrictions hard early on, the latter alsways took the approach. Both want to become chancellor during the next elecetions. Söder profited in popularity from his restrictions, he changed course, to a degree, as soon as public opinion started to "shift". At least the loud part of public opinion.
Similarities between the US and Germany, I see are
a) federalism, making central ction more difficult
b) upcoming election making Covid-19 as much a political question as it is a medical and economic one
c) multiple, opposing politians (Germany, even from the same party) or parties (US), aggravating point b)
As much as I hope that we can lift restrictions, I have the feeling that we might regret it. Hope I'm wrong.
For example in Romania, where the number of cases and deaths per million is low, there is no right; by Constitutional text there is a freedom of speech that cannot be infringed, but in practice we have laws that infringe it and they were not considered non-compliant with the Constitution. For example, anyone saying there was no Holocaust will go to prison, even if that is an opinion protected by the free speech article.
All other articles have a formulation "in the limit of the law", that means any law can limit any right. At the same time, one of the first measures of the Government when the lockdown was instituted was to announce the European Court for Human Rights that Romania is suspending human rights. Plain and simple, we have no rights, stuff that can be changed, suspended or taken are not rights, but privileges. Including the right to live, patients with chronically diseases were restricted to get medical care during the lockdown.
Therefore comparing USA with the rest of the "Western world" (Europe and eventually Australia, it is not about geography but culture) needs to take in consideration the situation of fundamental rights in the legislation: USA has fundamental rights, nobody else does.
In fact, blame the governor as well for not acting within the clear boundaries of their power. By trying to cloak themselves in authority they know is not legitimately theirs, they are actively contributing to the problem. The one party blameless in this is the courts.
Also interesting how you lament the divide, and then go ahead and only blame one side for everything. Oh well.
The ends do not justify the means in this country. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh’s highlighting of the decisiom is helpful: https://reason.com/2020/05/13/wisconsin-supreme-court-strike...
As for the court just ignoring the matter as an exercise of discretion that too would have been an abuse. The ends do not justify the means. We won’t last under that innovation.
This is certainly the facade presented by the international media, but it’s absolutely not true. I have family in some of the more media-celebrated countries, and their citizenry is absolutely not united in the way you’re presenting. Some of them have had their lockdowns legally challenged, legal analysis has absolutely not been favourable in regards to the legality, and attempting to pass zero-scrutiny emergency legislation is a pretty common theme. They’ve also prosecuted between hundreds and thousands of people for movement violations in most jurisdictions.
I remember browsing the international section of a certain large media organisation recently, they had one article ruthlessly condemning the measures implemented by the president of Poland, right next to one singing high praise of the measures implemented by the prime minister of New Zealand. I looked into the details, and the measures implemented were almost exactly the same, the only difference I could find is that police in Poland seem to generally be armed, while police in New Zealand seem to generally not be. I absolutely would not suggest anybody rely on the general tone of the reporting as some sort of gauge for how people are feeling/behaving in any particular place.
Refreshing to see some pressure for democracy to resume.
In the U.S. it's well-accepted, long-established constitutional law that presidential executive orders simply do not and cannot have the force of statutory law without connection to an enabling statutes. The Republican Guarantee clause of the Constitution means that the States have to have separate legislative and executive branches of government, and by extension that gubernatorial EOs also can't have the force of statutory law without the support of statutes -- otherwise Governors could rule without legislatures, as kings, which would be decidedly not a republican form of government.
As Powell said yesterday, 40% of households making $40K or less lost their jobs in March. This is crushing those most vulnerable, economically.
(EDIT: Though not in this case! From the opinion: "This case is about the assertion of power by one unelected official, Andrea Palm, ..."[0].)
But in this case the issue is that a governor cannot impose law without the legislature. Wisconsin's legislature still sits -- if not in session, perhaps the governor could call it into session -- and can pass legislation.
[0] https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?cont...
This is a strict increase in democracy.
To my knowledge, there was no such legislation. The order was issued by the executive.
Partisan judges felt the need to overturn that bill - despite the legislature retaining the power to override the executive, and to repeal that bill - if they could get 66% of the assembly behind it.
This is the opposite of a democratic process. The democratic process has checks and balances for dealing with a rogue executive - but it requires an overwhelming support of the legislature. Instead, this ended up being decided by unelected career bureaucrats.
Read the text of the decision before bringing politics into it.
IANAL, but browsing the text:
- The ruling cites the Wisconsin constitution.
- Governors can issue emergency orders (and maybe rules?) effective for 150 days.
- There's a distinction drawn between orders and rules. It doesn't matter if it's declared as an order, if it invokes the powers reserved for rules, it's a rule.
- Some reasons the court found it to be a rule: it applies to a general class (all residents), and defines new crimes (non-compliance)
- Criminal penalties can only be invoked for properly-promulgated rules.
- Therefore, it's a rule, not an order.
- Can it be a valid emergency rule? The court cites an example of a forest fire, there's no time for deliberation.
- The end date is ambiguous and this emergency is long-lived, therefore it could be brought for deliberation like a normal rule.
Then there's lots of handwringing about "an unelected official imprisoning whoever she sees fit", which is very handwavey and makes me suspect:
- The emergency rulemaking machinery of Wisconsin is vaguely defined, so there's not a specific rebuttal.
- There might have been some judicial activism here.
Ideally, the court would grant a stay on the enforcement of the decision, to give her time to properly promulgate the rule.
If the legislature resists, or the court doesn't grant the stay, that sucks, the bars and restaurants will open, people will get sick and die. Or maybe the Republicans will turn out correct and everything is fine.
It may be a boneheaded decision, but there's no legal recourse for bad policy correctly followed.
The ruling explicitly addresses this: the case has been in deliberation for longer than the originally requested stay already. During this time, why has the government not ALREADY promulgated the rule?
If "emergency" is vaguely defined, it seems completely within the purview of the courts to clarify it.
Nice summary btw.
> The justices declined to do that and had their ruling take effect immediately.
This is ignoring reality in favor of principle||partisan positioning (choose your preference).
Nothing rational or legally sound in throwing the situation into chaos.
Did the court justify their decision in denying the stay?
This assertion needs a citation. If this should be true either hospitalization must be so high that it overwhelms the health system, which was the original justification for the lockdown, or death rate must be high.
The 1.5 week old CDC report [1] shows same hospitalization rate as the flu for the vulnerable 65+ population, and less for the vulnerable <18 year population.
Stanford study [2] shows same death rate as flu.
At this point most states have partially reopened [3] and we are not seeing a surge in COVID cases.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/pdf/cov... [2] https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/04/24/study-challenges-report... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-ma...
Oh you mean the article whose title is "Study challenges reports of low fatality rate for COVID-19" and adds that " data scientists estimate that the fatality rate in New York City and Santa Clara County in California can be no less than 0.5%, or one of every 200 people infected."
(contrasting a previous study)
Is the hospitalization rate based on how many got the disease or among the general population?
The CDC report key takeaways section is recommended reading
[1]: https://www.wpr.org/us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends...
1: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
Isn't this the problem, the world over? That no government has actually baked into their stay-at-home orders what the specific metric is that unlocks the lockdown. People with mouths to feed are justifiably terrified as they see lockdown stretching out in front of them with no clearly defined endpoint, knowing that the keys to that lockdown are held by politicians who are very much detached from the hardship on the ground.
If everyone goes out will deaths keep going up or down?
What sorts of preventive measures can we put in place to be safe when going back out again?
A lot of answers are still missing
And, by the way, deaths going down is doing so soooo slowly because we really didn't get the R0 much 1.0. If people had actually locked down PROPERLY, deaths would be dropping much faster.
In addition, you need testing and contact tracers. You also need abundant personal protective equipment in your health providers for if you get a spike.
The problem is that the US federal government squandered 60 days in which it should have been filling those other criteria.
I broadly agree with your post, but even in countries like France/Italy that have had very strict lockdowns, there's still like a three-week half-life to deaths per day.
Risk can go down if: (1) much of the population becomes immune [after vaccination or recovery from infection e.g.], (2) treatments arrive that mitigate the impact of sickness, (3) some novel isolation equipment/methods arrive that reduce the spread of disease.
Emergency powers are for emergencies. It is no longer hour four in the incident command tent with a map and radio. It has been, and it may be again. But the steady state "waiting for a vaccine" stage is not that.
The normal mechanisms of government are logistically feasible on the time scale you're talking about, which is years. I hope they will listen to the experts. It worries me deeply that they seem not to be headed that way. But "I disagree with the legislature" is tautologically not a justification for emergency powers in a democracy.
Testing and contact tracing are not novel.
The end condition is a therapeutic/vaccine, and since that is not available yet, the next option is a national testing and contract tracing plan. Every successful country has a good one, every country that's seeing mass casualties doesn't have one. There is no political aspect to this. The science is pretty clear here (like climate change clear, meaning there's always a few contrarians for the sake of being contrarian, everyone else agrees). Herd immunity is not feasible, and millions will die.
I'm ignoring politicians, every annoying tech bro (always dudes...) who led "Growth" for a SaaS startup and therefore a are an expert in "virality" and "k-factor". Ignore Elon, this isn't his zone.
Everyone is bitching about the stay-at-home. IF THERE IS A CONTACT TRACING PROGRAM, HEALTHY UNEXPOSED PEOPLE WILL BE ABLE TO LIVE THEIR LIVES. This point seems lost on the people protesting. There's an exit strategy that their leader (protesters are largely Republican) doesn't want to do because testing reduces his re-election chances (?!??!?!). However, they have a testing and contract tracing program FOR THE WHITE HOUSE RIGHT THIS SECOND.
I've spoken to American friends in Hong Kong and they're so happy they live in a functioning autocracy. They're going out normally and enjoying their lives. Getting dinner with friends, going to beach, going out in LKF. (With occasional issues like the Seoul club superspreader). The only reason we are not having fun right now is because of the lack of testing and tracing.
It's expensive, intrusive, and people who get sick will be pissed and not follow the rules - but I don't see another option on the table, and none of the experts I've read or listened to (Fauci, Yaneer's team below) have another solution. This is not a poltical problem.
Yaneer Bar-Yam has been doing great work on supporting countries figure out the best plan, as well as preparing societies for the inevitable fallout of all of this. You hedge for risk. https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam
In the playbook left by the previous admin, the 3rd (5th in the domestic part) question in every stage of pandemic response, after "How bad is the virus and how quickly is it spreading?" is "Does the government have tracing and testing set up?". When it was a credible threat (January if not earlier), according to the extremely clear and again, NONPARTISAN, document below, we should have started setting up a testing/tracing program. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6819268/Pandemic-...
Caveat is that 15% of our nation lacks empathy and is completely detached from reality, and think wearing a mask is communism, so we'll never get to full compliance. However, 90% in a testing/contact tracing environment is better than what we have now.
In summary - if you want to end stay-at-home, you should hope the Trump admin magically becomes competent. Blue states will try to do it, but because of interstate commerce and conservative governments who think they're invincible for some reason, it's 100x harder.
Otherwise we'll be like this for what feels like forever and ~200k disproportionately lower-income, older and minority people will die. If he's re-elected in November, I'd put significant money on 500k+ deaths in the next 4 years. It won't go away completely and anti-vaxxers will feel vindicated by his re-election.
You can't keep people in their homes forever while they lose their jobs.
We aren't seeing a rise in cases in states that have been reopening for more than two weeks. The rate of decline may be lower but they are still in decline.
EDIT: And what about South Dakota, which never shutdown? Or Georgia, which has re-opened? Or Texas, which is re-opening? What is so special about Wisconsin?
Have they said this explicitly?
And if you think it was, please cite where the article says that.
To me it sounded like they argued that now that the urgent emergency condition ended, continuing lock downs need to be done in coordination with the legislature.
Which is very different from what you said.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/13/wisc...
I emailed the mods address.
Another:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics/wisconsin-supreme-co...
Which is literally the court's excuse for the "rulemaking" ruling - that they should have gone through the 12mo+ tradition of regulation-development that legislatively-empowered agencies utilize. Which isn't how public health powers usually work - the public health powers are delineated in empowering statutes and regulations ahead of time, and allow leewey to do things like "order quarantine" within broadly-worded statutes+regs.
Which is why this was phenomenally stupid. Besides ignoring context, this was a ruling that basically boiled down to "agencies cannot exercise the powers developed in the scope of their founding statutes and regulations unless those powers have been very explicitly laid out ahead of time, otherwise, they need to go to rulemaking for every application of their powers." It effectively guts the ability of agencies to do things they are supposed to do, have been doing, and prevents them from acting in time-frames <12months.
The whole point of having an executive is for a single person to act alone and decisively, especially in times of crisis. In the midst of an emergency is not the time for legislative subcommittees to endlessly debate.
You do recognize the difference between "government, acting according to established procedures with proper involvement by all branches of government" and "one single person, acting on emergency authority that was never intended to last this long", right?
The issue that was cobtrolling here was compliance with proper administative procedure, not the authority of state government to compel behavior. So precedent on the latter is immaterial.
> The state supreme court here grossly violated legal precedent, and will have its ass overturned in a heartbeat if anyone has the time, resources, and will to escalate.
It's a state law claim that has been adjudicated by the highest state court, there is no place for the case to be escalated to.
If America is going to close the State, it also has to freeze the economy and give people ideas, goals and hope. The American government, at all levels Federal and State, and failed at doing this to a tragic degree. I wrote more about this: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...
A good government is a secretary / janitor, not A CEO.
No. When our actions have harmed others, then the government has the right to step in--because we delegated that power to them.
But the government does not have the right to step in just because some government official things our actions "can" harm others. That's not their call to make. We are adult human beings and don't need keepers or nannies. We make our own choices, and if those choices do harm others, we take the consequences. But if they don't, the government needs to leave us alone.
I am all for this! How can we make this happen? Maybe we put tracing in place and if you left your house for no essential reason and without a mask and infect someone else you get shared with manslaughter? Let's do it!
Has anyone taken these laws to the Supreme Court?
Can you be more specific? It's the nebulousness of what "can harm" that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Taken to one extreme, there's almost nothing you can do that doesn't potentially harm others. For example, I could leave my stove burner on and burn down the entire apartment building. So many things come with risks to others, and those things are just part of existing in society.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes
I am all for lawful precautions but you have to give the people some credit. The lock downs and restrictions are incredibly arbitrary and in many cases nonsensical. you can have similar businesses and one is non essential or one has rules applied that don't apply to the other. this is what frustrates people the most, the vast majority know what to do. those who don't have always been there and always been a problem but it was easy to ignore them prior
But it doesn't matter since overruling those kinds of courts is almost impossible, so yes if you wish for a court to overturn such an order that is what happened here!
This is a fairly narrow decision, it only says the legislative must be involved into this.
Alas it did not address the question I had hoped it would - do sheltering rules violate the Bill of Rights?
> The Court's decision articulated the view that the freedom of the individual must sometimes be subordinated to the common welfare and is subject to the police power of the state.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
Modern "Civil Rights" is a parallel legal system in the US that overrides the former Anglo-derived legal system (though both are still on the books) whenever they conflict.
That's why you get people on the Right muttering about "muh Constitution" wondering why Supreme Court rulings that were considered impossible 70 years ago are commonplace today. Civil Rights legislation even overrides the Bill of Rights.
It is what is. But it's 100% anachronistic to being talking about Civil Rights rulings in 1905—that's roughly equivalent to discussing Marxist governance in ancient Rome.
----
To those downvoting, explain the right already lost in the 1st Amendment to Civil Rights: the right to be a racist asshole and choose who you associate with. That was 100% legal under any Anglo-derived system (hell, it's literally in the Bill of Rights!), but it's obviously not legal under a Civil Rights regime. Hence, what was once legal is now illegal, "muh Constitution" and "muh Bill of Rights" or not.
And why didn't it take an amendment to the Constitution to lose that right? Precisely because Civil Rights established its own legal system and justifications, allowing the Supreme Court to re-interpret previously held rights through the lens of Civil Rights whenever convenient. Boom: no more legislation and laws supporting racist assholes.
This is also why things like The Federalist Society and their quote-unquote originalists are so potentially damaging. When they say "originalist", they literally mean the original Anglo-derived legal system (complete with racist assholes) vs. the new Civil Rights-derived legal system. That's what the conflict is about.
Nothing I've written here should be remotely controversial.
[0] Not strictly true, the rulings started in the mid-1950s with Brown v. Board of Education, and you can find various overrides of the Anglo-derived system even further back.... However, I would argue the legal (as opposed to ethical) basis for earlier decisions is dubious, and didn't actually arrive until the mid-1960s.
Is an outstanding question about that?
There have been other pandemics, government actions to enforce health standards and etc. I don't think they've been ruled to be unconstitutional.
For great many Supreme Court rulings there was an opposite ruling in the past. It used to be that the black did not have rights, the gays could not marry, the women could not vote, and speaking up against war was treason.
Times change.
We're already seeing just how much enforcement of any of these decrees ultimately relies on the consent of the people to go along with it. Deploying jackboots over closing beaches or not letting people buy seeds at Walmart chews up legitimacy that will be needed as this thing goes on.
So although every state is different, Wisconsin isn't that different and its Supreme Court did not rule on the law and only on feelings.
The majority opinion was across the ideological spectrum, the dissenting opinion was across the ideological spectrum as well.
4-3 decision
One member of the court had just left the court, could have easily been 4-4 or another combination
Interesting, Wisconsin
The incumbent (Kelly) was voted out of office about a month ago, and the winning challenger (Karofsky) won't fill the seat until August 1, 2020. Kelly sided with the majority opinion in this decision.
Shouldn't they be some sort of stand-in and only take care of routine / bureaucratic tasks?
It's a system that is ripe for making these already out people do stuff that is ideological and hardline, while the voters obviously don't want it.
The long transition from FDR to Hoover caused the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to be passed and ratified which greatly shortened it -- it's still too long! One of the reasons the transition from general election to Presidential inauguration is so long is that the Electoral College has to convene, and that legal challenges to electoral results have to be resolved -- all that takes time, and some times (e.g., in 2000) it takes almost all the allotted time. Still, it could probably be made much shorter, but it would require yet another Amendment.
I suspect long transition periods in State governments have similar reasons for being.
Kelly voting with the majority is quite tame.
I remember that a ton of wonky stuff has happened in the "lame duck" period, but it does seem to be standard.
Our federal leadership is saying that we should both open up and not open up at the same time. Its encouraging protesters that are protesting for the disobedience of the guidelines that it released. We refused functioning tests from other nations that worked in order to produce our own. This cost valuable time and resulted in a first round of testing that did not work, costing more time.
Businesses are shuttered by government edict forcing them to furlough or lay people off. Those people are now forced to sit at home without income or any job prospects while the government that required it continues to get paid and states that no further stimulus or funds to individuals is really needed while stating that the $1,200 some limited subset of people got should last 10 weeks. At the same time this government is actively working to reduce food subsidies and health care options not tied to employment.
We have state governments using their national guard to protect their ppe from seizure by the federal government. The federal governments response has been rife with cronyism and self enrichment. State level unemployment has been a massive failure.
We now have the federal government stating that citizens are warriors and encouraging us to willingly fight and die with a virus? Scientists whose job it is to provide public information and policy are actively derided. Talking heads are actively calling the number of deaths a hoax and panning a reasonable response.
We could have just shut down in the beginning, the government could have use the DPA to mass produce PPE and the existing tests while providing people with at least a minimum UBI. They could have quickly reached a point where we are able to test people each day as they walk into the office if in person work is required. If the test is failed the individual must self isolate for x days and can return to work once they test negative. Federal government guarantees the persons job while they are sick and pays the salary so the employer does not suffer. We could have had this thing fully contained and been back up and running in a couple of months.
Instead we appear to have seen the stock market fall, thrown our hands up in the air and cried that it is too hard.
Rant over. I am just very frustrated that it appears we may have endured all of this for nothing due to terrible management.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/wisconsin-suprem...
Bradley's homophobic writings that she wrote in the Marquette University student newspaper in 1992 while an undergraduate stirred controversy during the race.[8][9] She had written letters to the editor and a column for the Marquette Tribune, in which she stated she held no sympathy for AIDS patients because they were "degenerates" who had effectively chosen to kill themselves. She also referred to gays as "queers".[10][11] She called the plurality of Americans who voted for Clinton "either totally stupid or entirely evil".[12] She blasted supporters of abortion as murderers, and compared abortion to the Holocaust and slavery.[10] She attacked feminists as "angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family" and defended Camille Paglia, who had written in a 1991 column that "women who get drunk at frat parties are 'fools' and women who go upstairs with frat brothers are 'idiots'."[13] Bradley wrote that Paglia had "legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape."[13] Bradley apologized for her student writings in 2016, shortly after they had stirred controversy.[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Bradley_(judge)
In case it wasn't obvious, Wisconsin is not New York. People drive cars rather than packing onto crowded subways. The transmission rate for the virus is going to be much lower there. The curve is naturally flatter.
Sounds like legitimate reasoning for their decision, no?