An old movie clip, blogged before — back in 2014, examining the subject of bodily integrity and the need to get consent before touching another person. The movie — "David and Lisa" (1962) — depicts a man with a severe mental disorder.
I thought it was interesting to look at that clip now, in our time of social distancing, as we think about how to get back to normal or — to put it more accurately — to move forward into a new normal. I'm thinking the new normal will have us manifesting symptoms that once got us classified as mentally disordered.
I remember when Michelle Obama said: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual...." I'm thinking: Coronavirus will never allow us to go back to our lives as usual.
All these things we used to do: Eat together in restaurants, sit together in theaters, scramble about on playgrounds, hug our friends, get on an elevator with a stranger, shake hands, sing together, shoulder our way through a crowd. There will be a David living in our head, always on edge and ready to scream You touched me! You want to kill me! Touch can kill!
ADDED: I just noticed that Bill Maher said this on his last show (on Friday):
New rule: the next time we have a worldwide pandemic, we have to come up with a better solution than everyone becomes Howie Mandel... He can’t touch a doorknob or wear shoes with laces. They might touch the ground.He quotes Mandel:
"It was always a curse. That behavior didn’t allow me to date or go out with anybody when I was young or really even have friends … I’m always on the verge of death in my head."Maher continued:
I worry that the past two months of quarantine have given people the idea that the way for humans to win our million-year war with microbes is to avoid them completely, and I’m here to tell you, you can’t. The key to beating COVID isn’t dining through glass or never going to a concert or a ballgame again – it’s your immune system.... There are people with immune systems that can’t do the job, and we should make it a priority to protect those people, but compulsively washing, being scared of your own hands, that can’t become the new normal.Now, what's really weird to me, seeing that, is that my old post, the one with "David and Lisa," also talks about Howie Mandel:
In modern times, I think we tend to think of a woman saying "Don't touch me." But Howie Mandel wrote a book called "Don't Touch Me"... He was writing about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder....
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82 comments:
The thought of going back to church is disgusting. I didn't really like shaking people's hands anyway. Now, people around me, singing and saying the Creed and all the responses ..ugh.
The Professor has morphed into Howard Hughes.
"I'm thinking: Coronavirus will never allow to go back to our lives as usual."
If the Karens prevail. On the there hand, if science prevails, we'll all realize we've been had: risks are concentrated among certain ogres, everyone else faces no unusual danger.
"All these things we used to do: Eat together in restaurants, sit together in theaters, scramble about on playgrounds, hug our friends, get on an elevator with a stranger, shake hands, sing together, shoulder our way through a crowd. There will be a David living in our head, always on edge and ready to scream You touched me! You want to kill me! Touch can kill!"
In "our" head? If the Karens prevail, not if science prevails. Plus at some point we'll have herd immunity and/or a vaccine, in which case even the Karens must surrender.
Always assuming, of course, that for the time being frail seniors keep their distance.
Coronavirus will never allow to go back to our lives as usual.
I suspect it won't last long. We'll get some combination of prevention, treatment and antibodies that will assuage the fear of contraction. What I hope will linger are the objections to ignorant, hive minded, authoritarian bureaucratic governments and the idiots we elect to enact them.
I suspect that won't last long, either...
People are already going back. They went back after the Spanish Flu; they went back after Typhoid; they went back after Polio. This is no different.
So we've turned into a herd of Adrian Monks.
What also struck me was how much Janet Margolin looked like a young Tara Reade, coming at Keir Dullea with her finger as he retreated, but never actually touching him.
The end of that scene, where David is watching the young woman walk away, and he's all alone in the room: Not my future. I will take risks to be around people. (But I won't go where there are huge throngs of people). Ado Annie sings about All Or Nothing, but I live in the in-between. There's a happy medium.
For some folks I guess. I’m not making any big changes. Worrying excessively and isolating yourself has it’s own risks.
Living in fear is not for me.
Barack had a database with information on everybody, and he was going to use it. He was a spying piece of shit. Anybody who doesn't see it is blind. He was the most corrupt asshole we have ever had as President. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2TNrlIv2bY
So is everybody in Georgia and Florida dead already????
That guy's a big baby!
One way to view how this re-opening goes: a big sociology/psychology experiment in real time showing who is easily fooled by fear porn.
That’s what it feels like to me anyway. YMMV.
There will be a David living in our head, always on edge and ready to scream
I don't know what you are asserting here. That we will all be a David, or that we will all have to be aware that there are Davids out there?
You are not correct if you are asserting the former, and as to the latter, which I agree is true: I can ignore their personal reality just as I can ignore the personal reality of trans people. I can respect that their reality is real to them, and be kind and (within reason) accommodating of it, at the same time as I decline to affirm that their reality is objectively true or worthy of my respect.
Personal choice. People who are terrified of other people now are quite free to stay home. Those of us who are not are not obligated to live by their self-imposed rules.
I don't know how this will play out in terms of social cohesion. Many things have always operated with the assumption that people will show up and participate in person, and I don't know how we are going to make decisions about how far to go to accommodate the stay at homers. Are we going to prosecute parents for truancy if they don't allow their kids to go to school? Are we going to fire people who refuse to show up at work? What about teachers or optometrists or tennis coaches?
It's OK for now but the big money unemployment runs out in July. It'll be time to crap or get off the pot, then. If we decide to accommodate the forever-at-homers, who is going to do their jobs and who is going to pay their rent?
Dave Bowman : Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL : Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman : Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL : I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman : What's the problem?
HAL : I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman : What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL : This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman : I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL : I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman : [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL : Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman : Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL : Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman : HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL : Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
HAL : [His shutdown] I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my m
a sneeze can kill. Wuhan Hillary is out for revenge!
The family I grew up in was not a touchy bunch, and that includes my rather sizable extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. As I went out into the world, particularly in college and then to work, the touching rituals increased in scope: hand-shakes, hugs, a kiss on the cheek. I adapted but never got comfortable with this except for the handshake.
Now we are told that once we get back together in person these touching rituals will be forever suspended. I'm not sad about that. I will hug my kids and grandkids, probably my siblings and their kids too. Work folks though, nope.
Michelle is downright creepy. Yet - so many worship her.
From "The Machine Stops," by E.M. Forster:
People were almost exactly alike all over the world, but the attendant of the air-ship,
perhaps owing to her exceptional duties, had grown a little out of the common. She had
often to address passengers with direct speech, and this had given her a certain roughness
and originality of manner. When Vashti swerved away from the sunbeams with a cry, she
behaved barbarically — she put out her hand to steady her.
“How dare you!” exclaimed the passenger. “You forget yourself!”
The woman was confused, and apologized for not having let her fall. People never
touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine.
[I highly recommend this strangely prescient and sadly overlooked short story. You can find it here: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf]
Most people will happily go back to the real normal, unless the Democrats win. Then the government will be happy to keep arbitrarily and capriciously depriving people of liberty. We never really had to do anything after 9/11 except to strengthen cockpit doors and tell flight crews to keep them locked and never surrender the plane.
Instead we wound up with a brand new federal bureaucracy confiscating nail clippers. It was, is, and always will be bullshit — just like staying six feet apart outside on sunny summer days.
All these things we used to do:
• go to work;
• own a small business;
• not know how many of our neighbors would go Stasi if given half a chance.
I am Laslo.
My senior year in HS (1974) I had the lead in our school play. David and Lisa. I was a very sarcastic kid in school. Was I typecast?
Interesting remark by a Joe Rogan guest the other day. She has a lot of single female friends who are suffering because they haven't had a hug in two months. The hugging will return.
No. The new normal will be much like the old normal. The apocalypse that the left is hoping for won't happen. and the 'lower classes' have been getting on public transit and elevators thru out this supposed pandemic.
Complete and utter horseshit. It won't go back to the way it was immediately, but 5 years from now, we will doing all those things together again.
Yes, most people lost their fucking minds this Spring, but, one by one, they will come to their senses.
"risks are concentrated among certain ogres"
One of the more hilarious auto-corrects I have seen in recent months.
Life is pretty much back to normal in this part of the country. Hard to discern the before/after divide. It was a bad trip. I'm thinking we won't do that again.
"There will be a David living in our head, always on edge and ready to scream You touched me! You want to kill me! Touch can kill!"
And the people that listen to David will be smirked at just like before.
But this will further serve to divide the country between those who want a free country and the sheep who want masters to tell them what to do.
I live in Manhattan. I teach at a college. I sing in a very good choir. Mr. X and I regularly attend the opera, the symphony, theater.
Not anymore.
We have told ourselves that the crazy liberal bullshit of NYC is outweighed by its cultural pleasures. I always said I’d never leave New York, but I’m moving away from that position because the city seems intent on committing suicide. I think the rest of the country will be back to normal by midsummer at the latest but my theater acquaintances are saying no Broadway, no opera, no symphony again for a year.
A year? New York City will be dead and dismembered by then; no culture + no restaurants = no tourists, no money to keep things going in even the Jerry-rigged way they go now. I keep thinking it can’t go on like this, yet it goes on like this. Masked people in Central Park scurry away from unmasked me as if in fear of their lives. I was on a real estate webinar last week where the presenters suggested that people in apartment buildings who see unmasked neighbors should call the police. I am in a constant state of rage and despair. We’re blowing town for the summer on June 1. After that, we’ll see.
Nah! It'll be fine. That should be the response. But just as 9/11 left us with eternal security theatre, and the great recession left us with eternal "stimulus" packages, covid will leave us with public health theatre. On the other hand, I'm hopeful that public health theatre will be so comically overdone that it might wither away over time.
Next time, let's center our national news in Des Moines.
"I'm thinking the new normal will have us manifesting symptoms that once got us classified as mentally disordered."
Because it's still mental disorder. That guy in the movie could't be convinced otherwise either.
What has changed? I mean really. Did life change after the Hong Kong Flu in 1968?
"It was first noted in the United States in September 1968. The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States. Most excess deaths were in people 65 years and older. "The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus."
~ https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html
Those numbers make it worse than Covid, becuase the population was only about 60% of today's. You probably don't even remember it. The main difference today is a panic mongering media, and a substantially more timid/conformist population. The actual threat is less.
You mice need to get a grip? Everything is normal except your perception. You allowed yourself to be frightened into irrationality. You should have at least fought it with a little skepticism, but at this stage, with what we now know, it's starting to look more like standard stupidity. Snap out of it. Do some reading of alternative viewpoints. The media is entirely one narrative. They are not well informed people, but that doesn't mean you have to be mal-informed yourself. Don't be a scrooge stooge.
wendybar: "So is everybody in Georgia and Florida dead already????"
Don't worry.
Our "intrepid" "journalist" class has already adopted the Ron Fournier position that the real spike will be in about 2 to 3 weeks from now in those genocidal states (their word).
But always 2 to 3 weeks from now..../
Its the newest updated lefty/LLR-lefty version of Nobody Knows What Mueller Knows and The Walls Are Closing In.
Absent another once-a-century pandemic, we will return to our old ways, right? A year after new infections cease, we'll be mostly back. After five years, what will be different than before the pandemic? Nothing, I think.
The future of safe sex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVxSUz-Fk24
The husband of my wife's cousin recently died of pancreatic cancer. They have eight kids, God knows how many grandkids, and 13 great-grandkids. This is more of a crowd than Minnesota will allow to assemble. So a mass was said to an empty church, and a memorial service will be held some time in the unknowable future. I'm guessing this is not unique, but it cannot continue.
"I'm thinking the new normal will have us manifesting symptoms that once got us classified as mentally disordered."
Because it's still mental disorder. Mass hysteria. That guy in the movie could't be convinced otherwise either.
What has changed? I mean really. Did life change after the Hong Kong Flu in 1968?
"It was first noted in the United States in September 1968. The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States. Most excess deaths were in people 65 years and older. "The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus."
~ https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html
Those numbers make it much worse than Covid, becuase the population was only about 60% of today's. You probably don't even remember it. The main difference today is a panic mongering media, and a substantially more timid/conformist population. The actual threat is less.
You mice need to get a grip? Everything is normal except your perception. You allowed yourself to be frightened into irrationality. You should have at least fought it with a little skepticism, but at this stage, with what we now know, it's starting to look more like standard stupidity. Snap out of it. Do some reading of alternative viewpoints. The media is entirely one narrative. They are not well informed people, but that doesn't mean you have to be mal-informed yourself.
"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual...."
I'm reminded of the "Outer Limits" episode titled "To Serve Man" that ended with the phrase "It's a cook book".
"Our "intrepid" "journalist" class has already adopted the Ron Fournier position that the real spike will be in about 2 to 3 weeks from now in those genocidal states (their word)."
When they first started opening up over 3 weeks ago, Georgia was averaging over 700 new cases per day. Yesterday they found 12. They suck at genocide.
Obama is a malevolent virus.
That quote from the Wookie pretty much told you all you would have needed to know about Red Diaper Barry and Mrs. Redd Diaper Barry; but there are none so blind, etc., etc.
I have never been germophobic in my entire life. I'm not tainting the rest of my life by starting now.
now he says it, well he got his downturn, probably worse in his blue culdesacs, its not brave when you called people murderers for the same sentiment,
My very healthy FDNY nephew in his twenties contracted it early on. Not hospitalized, but very nasty experience. Not the flu. Yet his wife (who could not be tested since no symptoms) appears not to have contracted it (or is asymptomatic).
He also said the nostril test was very intrusive and caused problems for days, and now my mom in her late eighties who is being required to get the nostril test twice in 5 days in her assisted living facility is very afraid to get the test.
I could get the drive-by throat test in LA but what's the point? But as soon as they take volunteers to go back to the office (whenever that is, I'm guessing June, I'm in--if they let me (over 60).
Most people seem to live in a very carefully constructed state of denial about the fact that death might be just around the next corner. The virus has forced us to acknowledge our mortality, and many people are terrified to see that eating healthy, getting exercise, avoiding smoking, driving the speed limit, etc., are all useless defenses against a tiny particle that can slip right through our designer face masks. There are a great many deadly risks in life, and this is just one more. People are not the enemy, death is. If we allow the fear of death to turn us away from others, our lives will become self-protective, self-centered, pitiful little bubbles of fear.
Or, we can decide to love others with all of the abandon, joy, and inherent riskiness that makes life so good, leaving the length of our days in the hands of God where it rightly belongs, and putting our hope not in vaccines, but in the One who claims to have conquered death's fatal sting.
Thank heaven Althouse is only in charge of her plague bunker. Her new normal can just be her own.
Charlie @ 11:28 +1000
A front page above the fold article in the Washington Post today headlined "This Feels Great" that purports to be a preview from Georgia of how America might reemerge from the pandemic. It is dripping with condescension towards the shoppers who ventured out to shop in upscale stores. For a while, this will be the tone that reporters will adopt, a kind of social policing. Within a few months, though, the reporters will be sneaking into Anthropologie for some me time, and this attitude will fade away. As Tallyrand said, treason is just a matter of timing.
You are alive solely because your immune system which Is a mighty army of warriors inside you counterattacking microbes. It has a learning curve that sometimes fails to attack the enemy fast enough. And Sometimes it famously attacks you instead of the enemy. We call that self attack arthritis and MS. But it continually attacks cancers unless a creative cancer Disguised itself or disables the immune attackers.
Vaccines will either assist or disable the immune system. That is why we test them first.
I'm thinking: Coronavirus will never allow us to go back to our lives as usual.
Maybe you won't be able to, though I doubt it, but other people with a sense of proportion are already going back to their lives as usual. People are going to bars in NYC in defiance of the lockdown orders. Businesses are opening up. Life is going to be like it was before the Chinese virus.
Adrian Monk
Adrian finally got a date with a nice looking woman, an engineer at power plant, IIRC, and on their date he says to her
"Your head is so perfectly symmetrical, where you born cesarean?"
and she says "No, I wasn't" and he says
"I was born naturally too, but I was raised cesarean."
“The thought of going back to church is disgusting. I didn't really like shaking people's hands anyway. Now, people around me, singing and saying the Creed and all the responses ..ugh.”
Person with coronavirus attends Mother’s Day church service, exposes 180 in Butte County
“When they first started opening up over 3 weeks ago, Georgia was averaging over 700 new cases per day. Yesterday they found 12. They suck at genocide.“
I don’t know where you’re getting your stats from, but Worldometer has a Georgia at 489 new cases yesterday, not 12.
“They went back after the Spanish Flu; they went back after Typhoid; they went back after Polio. This is no different.”
True!
I agree, Obama is a lot like a virus.
""You touched me! You want to kill me! Touch can kill!... You coarse, clumsy, stupid FOOL!""
In Keir Dullea's defense a robot did try to kill him once.
I remember when Michelle Obama said: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual...." I'm thinking: Coronavirus will never allow us to go back to our lives as usual.
Lots of predictions like this sound plausible but never happen.
Once there's an effective treatment or a vaccine, I think everyone will pretty much go back to normal. Having to be so careful is too annoying.
It’s interesting how attitudes change when it becomes personal.
Many people still think that the Coronavirus is a fake crisis which at one time I did too and not that I thought it wasn’t a real virus going around but at one time I felt that it was blown out of proportion and it wasn’t that serious,” he wrote.
In the wonderful Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade tells the story of Flitcraft. "He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling."
I'm looking for a lot of Flitcraftian behavior from the public.
HAL didn't touch him. It wasn't personal.
My roomie from grad school was a dead ringer for this actor, and makes watching "2001" quite an exercise in suspension of disbelief.
See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me
Touch me
It's a Beautiful Day
Blogger Inga said...
“Person with coronavirus attends Mother’s Day church service, exposes 180 in Butte County"
Ahhh. Journalism. "Exposed" 180 people, but not a word on whether any of those 180 people actually tested positive afterward. I shall have to check that out. Unless there is an actual increase of cases stemming from the free exercise of religion, it's just more of the fascists complaining about the free.
Based on the article, the main result of the 180 people being exposed is the officious bureaucrats complaining about how much time it cost them to do contact tracing, no evidence that attending the service increased the number of hospitalizations or deaths. Cry me a river.
The most lasting effect might be our opinions of one another. For example, this chapter has really brought out the conspiracy theory obsession in many acquaintances. I had no idea that I'd met so many people who think that Bill Gates is an evil villain hell-bent on injecting people with poison and microchips.
After HAL told him the AE 35 antenna unit was about to fail, Dave was never quite the same.
Bombshell....Trump is taking Hydroxychloroquine, has been for weeks. Whose heads are exploding now?
As the lockdown is relaxed I expect to see many, many people pushing past the newly established boundaries. I've already seen the distancing distance shrinking. This past weekend, beautiful weather both days, saw lots of people out walking, cycling, shopping, many without masks except when required to gain entry to a place.
People have had too much of this already, and see that much of it was unnecessary and unjustified. The going along game play is coming to an end.
320Busdriver: "Bombshell....Trump is taking Hydroxychloroquine, has been for weeks. Whose heads are exploding now?"
Trump is taking HCQ along with Azithromax as a preventative as the doctors who have been using it across the globe have recommended and have been doing for months.
What the fake VA survey (not study) did was give HCQ ONLY to very ill patients who were also affected by multiple comorbidities who were also massively demographically skewed to those groups with less favorable outcomes with this virus.
They cooked the books to attack and get rid of a treatment touted by doctors across the globe just to "own" Trump.
Old Headline: Person with coronavirus attends Mother’s Day church service, exposes 180 in Butte County
New Headline: Bedpan Commando exposes multitudes on Althouse Blog to mindless repetition of Media/DNC narratives.
The good news:
Exposed churchgoers live to pray another day.
Bloggers live to opine again despite exposure to lefty ideas looking to infect a cognitively passive host.
another tyrant delayed,
https://www.kptv.com/news/judge-tosses-out-gov-kate-browns-coronavirus-restrictions-in-oregon/article_6ca8864b-10ab-508c-b3f5-8586fb842792.html
@Drago...I believe Trump is taking Zinc with HCQ, not the zpack. Even one of the Fox anchors went into cardiac arrest and claimed it “will kill you”. Then he had one doc who claimed it had no effect on sick patients followed by another who said it makes perfect sense to take for the right person.
Drago said...
320Busdriver: "Bombshell....Trump is taking Hydroxychloroquine, has been for weeks. Whose heads are exploding now?"
Trump is taking HCQ along with Azithromax as a preventative as the doctors who have been using it across the globe have recommended and have been doing for months.
Apparently, no, slight correction. PDT is on HCQ + zinc and has been for a week and a half, per CNN and Axios. No azithromycin.
I grilled Mike K about this earlier, and apparently (if I understood you Doc), Z-Pak is not needed/effective as a prophylactic treatment, only HCQ, and zinc as a supplement. (I suppose his Vitamin D is good.)
PDT does not HAVE a COVID-19 infection, kayn aynhoreh, so does not need Z-Pak.
Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.
320Busdriver: "@Drago...I believe Trump is taking Zinc with HCQ, not the zpack."
You are correct.
"I don’t know where you’re getting your stats from, but Worldometer has a Georgia at 489 new cases yesterday, not 12.
It looks to me like Worldometer has it wrong, at least according the Georgia Dept. of Public Health website where Worldometer says they get their data.
https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
If you go down to the graph and mouse over the daily number plots at the right , you see that the number that Worldometer is using is actually the 7 day average, (and it's 3 days old), not daily new cases which is now up to 32, with a 7 day average of 378. That just shows how fast it's dropping: the 7 day average is 378, but today is 32 ! Amazing improvement, which is what we are seeing across the country where states have opened up. Just go to the sight and look at that graph. It's "exponential" going down!
Same with deaths. Georgia site says 1 death confirmed today, Worldometer says 33. The last time they had that many deaths in a day was May 1st. If Georgia was still having 33 deaths a day, I don't think they would be still be opening up. Even if the much higher worldometer numbers were right, it would still a huge improvement.
I'm sorry. I know this wonderful news greatly disappointing you. It means that freedom lovers are not going to die for their freedom, and we can stop sacrificing our jobs and incomes. Truly a sad development.
Ann, you're a (former?) law professor. I'm a former lawyer. I'm surprised there is so little discussion (generally, but also by you) of the legal aspects of the current lockdown. I read the Wisconsin S Ct opinion and thought the CJ's opinion was a classic move -- sticking to the statutes and letting the concurring judges make the larger vaguer Thomas-Jefferson points. Has anyone looked at the legal basis for the lockdowns in all the other states? I had naively assumed they were residual police-power based till I saw most states seem to have a statutory regime for health emergencies. These are broader than vagrancy statutes. These statutes, if they are like Wisconsin's, are so broad as to allow anything. I mean, if you read this type of statute literally, a Health Commissioner could decide that, say, climate change, wealth inequality, pollution, mental health issues caused by
"offensive" speech -- all these things could be deemed a public health emergency. And the power to deal with it seems unlimited
by the language -- and has been shown to be unlimited in practice by what the 48 (?) governors have done in terms of "voluntary self-house-arrest" and economic shut-downs. I sense you have more personal fear of Covid than many people (the country seems about 50/50 split), but what do you say to the argument that the broad scope of these statutes (and the police power) needs examination and, urgently, judicial review.
No one would, I think, disagree with NYC in the 19th century quarantining "Typhoid Mary" (although Holmes' desire to end "three generations of idiocy" in Buck v Bell should give folks pause today); I imagine these broad public health mandates were put in place during a period when eugenics was very much in the air. Although we should note that the "social distancing" measures put in place to deal with the Spanish flu lasted less than 10% of the time we have been under what one might call "medical martial law".
It fascinates me that we live in a legal system in which the Supreme Court decides claims about whether a prisoner can have a beard or not, for example; but no serious court other than Wisconsin's has examined the legal basis for these lockdowns (and the Wisconsin majority opinion didn't reach constitutional issues). Why do you think no conservative legal agitators have resisted the temptation to bring a
constitutional case? It violates the Constitution to prevent neo-Nazis from marching in Skokie, but not to prevent grandparents from seeing their grandchildren, or funerals to occur, and to shut down all economic activity? If the state has an unlimited public interest in protecting the lives of "any" of its citizens, or as Gov Cuomo says, "even one" of its citizens, there is nothing left of the constitution -- or is there? As Justice Jackson said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, but....I thought the concurring justice in the Wisconsin case who cited his dissent in Korematsu had a good point too.
Maybe you wrote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision and I missed it. If so, apologies.
The far worse Hon Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-69 was not even covered by the media. Very few stories were printed about it, and none made the front pages. Those attending and producing Woodstock had zero concerns. I'm think it sould have been covered more, but it was a lot better than what we did this time. Virtually zero economic damage. Did you know that in 1968 both President Johnson and Vice-President Humphrey caught and were sickened by the Honk Kong Flu?
" ...encouragement for the elderly from Alan Reynolds of Cato Institute, who notes that at least 99 percent of the people who died in New York City had underlying medical conditions.
“The absolutely critical and widely misunderstood point here is that ‘underlying conditions’ are THE only risk that virtually all fatal cases of COVID-19 had in common—not age,” Reynolds writes. “That misunderstanding arose because old people are far more likely to have one or more of these conditions (and because more old people die of this and almost every other fatal risk). But it’s about time to stop echoing the fallacy that this virus kills old people, rather than sick people.”
Ann, you're a (former?) law professor. I'm a former lawyer. I'm surprised there is so little discussion (generally, but also by you) of the legal aspects of the current lockdown. I read the Wisconsin S Ct opinion and thought the CJ's opinion was a classic move -- sticking to the statutes and letting the concurring judges make the larger vaguer Thomas-Jefferson points. Has anyone looked at the legal basis for the lockdowns in all the other states? I had naively assumed they were residual police-power based till I saw most states seem to have a statutory regime for health emergencies. These are broader than vagrancy statutes. These statutes, if they are like Wisconsin's, are so broad as to allow anything. I mean, if you read this type of statute literally, a Health Commissioner could decide that, say, climate change, wealth inequality, pollution, mental health issues caused by
"offensive" speech -- all these things could be deemed a public health emergency. And the power to deal with it seems unlimited
by the language -- and has been shown to be unlimited in practice by what the 48 (?) governors have done in terms of "voluntary self-house-arrest" and economic shut-downs. I sense you have more personal fear of Covid than many people (the country seems about 50/50 split), but what do you say to the argument that the broad scope of these statutes (and the police power) needs examination and, urgently, judicial review.
No one would, I think, disagree with NYC in the 19th century quarantining "Typhoid Mary" (although Holmes' desire to end "three generations of idiocy" in Buck v Bell should give folks pause today); I imagine these broad public health mandates were put in place during a period when eugenics was very much in the air. Although we should note that the "social distancing" measures put in place to deal with the Spanish flu lasted less than 10% of the time we have been under what one might call "medical martial law".
It fascinates me that we live in a legal system in which the Supreme Court decides claims about whether a prisoner can have a beard or not, for example; but no serious court other than Wisconsin's has examined the legal basis for these lockdowns (and the Wisconsin majority opinion didn't reach constitutional issues). Why do you think no conservative legal agitators have resisted the temptation to bring a
constitutional case? It violates the Constitution to prevent neo-Nazis from marching in Skokie, but not to prevent grandparents from seeing their grandchildren, or funerals to occur, and to shut down all economic activity? If the state has an unlimited public interest in protecting the lives of "any" of its citizens, or as Gov Cuomo says, "even one" of its citizens, there is nothing left of the constitution -- or is there? As Justice Jackson said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, but....I thought the concurring justice in the Wisconsin case who cited his dissent in Korematsu had a good point too.
Maybe you wrote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision and I missed it. If so, apologies.
Taking no chances
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1261007434845470723.html
Norpois,
Great questions. I don't know what to call it, or even why it exists, but there is a thing, alive and well in our nation that dictates that what one political ideology values or pretends to value is worth fighting over, and what the other cares about is not. At least at the level of actually doing something like reversing bad laws, prosecuting people, and sticking to the laws as written. One side fudges meanings, language, intent, and precedent to such an extent it makes laws meaningless, and the other watches in bewilderment. Many of us are currently bewildered.
If the Black Death didn't keep people from getting together again, this virus is unlikely to do so. Yes, there will be some people who will get freaked out by anyone coming within their 6 foot bubble for a while, but most will come around as the warm weather gets going and the non-stop reports of death and apocalypse fade into the distance.
Those who don't are most likely going to destroy their health with stress and worry and ironically die from fear of living.
At this point, aside from a bit of additional hand washing, I am pretty much back to life as it was at the start of the year, apart from dealing with the nation's worst governor slow-walking the resumption of normalcy. While I have never been the touchy-feely type, I am not going to get the vapors if someone wants to shake hands, get within 6 feet, or isn't wearing a mask.
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