Gov. Gavin Newsom. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
California’s Indeterminate Lockdown Based on ‘What Ifs’
‘Imagine for a moment that the nation were ruled by dictatorship of doctors’
By Katy Grimes, April 6, 2020 8:26 am
Most people don’t fear the virus as much as they fear this indeterminate sentence.
The indeterminate sentence in penology is considered draconian and cruel by defense lawyers. Yet the indeterminate sentence is exactly what the state’s residents are experiencing in California’s indeterminate lockdown over the spread of coronavirus.
Nineteen days ago California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a shelter-at-home order to the residents over concerns for the spread of coronavirus. However, California’s lockdown plan has no end in sight, and the governor has said it could last into June. Rather than practicing calm but assertive leadership, the governor is ginning up worse fears into his state’s residents.
While it appears that we are dealing with a nasty virus clearly dangerous to older age groups and people in densely populated cities, the same politicians who have fanatically shut down cities, counties and entire states are committed to and continue to ramp up fear so that citizens will accept their extreme orders as necessary.
Rogue police are issuing citations to people out for a jog on public trails in Southern California, where parks and beaches are closed. People are questioning why they can’t go out for a jog, but are allowed to go to Target, Walmart, Costco, Home Depot and the Taco Bell drive-through as frequently as they want.
And, as California Globe noted this weekend, while California’s residents are under shelter-in-place orders, the homeless are exempt. Drugged up zombie vagrants are not cited for wandering the streets, breaking into cars, garages, sheds and homes, and openly purchasing and taking heroin and meth.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti asked snitches to rat out their neighbors and friends for violating his stay-at-home order – for a reward. The Mayor is paying snitches? With taxpayers money?
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a letter to the President 25 million Californians were going to get coronavirus. He never admitted how he came up with that number, but his staff reported they relied on the computer model from Imperial College – the computer model now found to have been grossly incorrect. But the governor did not walk back his claim, even as the Imperial College professor did.
Imperial College originally predicted that more than 500,000 people could die in the U.K., and two million or more could die in the U.S. However, epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, the author of the report, said he now expects the death toll in Britain to be under 20,000, Daily Caller reported.
Gov. Newsom issued a lockdown challenge to other Governors during a recent interview on CNN: “What are you waiting for?” Newsom asked. “If you think it’s not going to happen to you, there are many proof points all across this country; for that matter, around the rest of the world. You’ll never regret overcompensating at the moment so that you’re preparing people for meeting this moment in the responsible way,” he said.
“How else can a handful of elected officials with no specialized knowledge of anything except fundraising persuade millions of people to obey their directives to stay in their homes, watching from a distance as they lose their jobs and savings?” Orange County Register’s Susan Shelley asked.
Doctors and scientists behaving like bureaucrats are dangerous. They are basing most of their social distancing and stay-home orders on worst case scenario “what ifs.”
What if another Wuhan type virus emerges out of China in the fall as National Institute of Health Dr. Anthony Fauci says? Will we keep Americans locked down until then? You see how ridiculous this now seems, closing America down?
“Imagine for a moment that the nation were ruled by dictatorship of doctors,” Chuck DeVore asked in an op ed. “Private ownership of guns would be curtailed. All tobacco products would be outlawed. Sugary drinks would be heavily taxed. Taxes on alcohol would go even higher. Football, boxing and other dangerous sports would be banned.”
New York City police arrested three people in Brooklyn over the weekend after they allegedly “failed to maintain social distancing,” and then threw the woman into a holding cell with two dozen other women, the Intercept reported. The woman told The Intercept that a large group of officers, wearing no masks, approached her and her boyfriend and told them it was “time to leave,” then proceeded to grab her boyfriend before they could do so.
Diana West weighed in on Twitter.
In the dumb, brute #CoronaWorldOrder, the rights of free people are nullified to keep us “safe” (but not really). Brilliant. https://t.co/GctSj2idWy
— Diana West (@diana_west_) April 5, 2020
Is this where we are headed? #CoronaWorldOrder? With California police arresting surfers and people out for a walk, but ignoring the homeless vagrants on the same street, it appears so.
Many physicians are now saying the lockdown and social distancing orders are preventing herd immunity, and will drag out the course of the virus. “Stanford biophysicist and Nobel laureate Michael Levitt said this week, ‘The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be,’” Daily Wire reported.
“Last week, Levitt emphasized: ‘[Y]ou need to think of corona like a severe flu. It is four to eight times as strong as a common flu, and yet, most people will remain healthy and humanity will survive.’”
Governor Newsom could talk to biophysicist Michael Levitt at Stanford, just down the highway from the State Capitol, but Levitt would poke gaping holes in the governor’s scare tactics. Most people don’t fear the virus as much as they fear this indeterminate sentence.
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Spot on article as usual. Very few journalists are asking the right questions. It is much easier for the government to suspend and eliminate our constitutional rights during an “emergency” . Much of the Covid-19 information doesn’t pass the smell test. The people are being manipulated for political gain. I fear our government more than the virus.
MDP
Same here. Well said
How convenient that the full list of items our leftist tyrants (see Newsom, et al) have always dreamed of are being addressed and accomplished under cover of this thing, when not one day of normal daily life in Jan. 2020 and before contained any legitimate attempt by these same people to solve the already-existing dangerous-to-public health problems (e.g. homelessness/vagrancy) that the public had been screaming about for months on end because it was on full display and growing exponentially on every street corner of their neighborhoods.
These people (CA politicians, bureaucrats) have consistently proven themselves to be untrustworthy, yet now expect to be trusted. And now those same people who screwed their eyes shut, put their fingers in their ears, and said “la la la I can’t HEAR you” against obvious dangers while they feverishly took pains to ban plastic straws have the power to direct their henchmen to threaten ordinary people watching the sunset with jail time if they don’t obey their nonsensical and inconsistent directives.
If this situation strikes you every day as BIZARRE, at least hang on to that impression, because the last thing we need is that everyone should eventually regard it as routine, ordinary, and normal everyday life.
Thank you Katy for another great article. I work for the CA state (and have been fortunate enough to keep my job and work from home), and have 2 school-aged children. One in in a private Christian elementary school (which has done an excellent job in providing a good weekly distance-learning program for the past weeks and the other in a public high school, who hasn’t received much schoolwork in the past 3 weeks, with formalized distance learning plan coming after Easter Break, which will go on until the end of the school year?. I am a concerned California citizen, as I feel the longer the state keeps the schools closed, it was cause a domino effect with the businesses being closed, and our economy failing to recover as quick as other states, as I feel our stay at home order will continue (or as indeterminate as you say) well after the rest of the country goes back to normal.
Thank you for this well informed and needed article Katy. I too fear my government more than the virus. Here is the one truth I know….Gavin Newsome’s draconian orders are not all for the public good. He is a radical leftist opportunist…most people can agree on that fact. So the question I ask myself is…how does a radical leftist opportunist act in an emergency? We all know that answer.
It’s comforting to know that there are rational people out there who are not afraid to question status quo. This lockdown feels like gaslighting….someone trying to distort our reality, telling you that word that you perceive with your 5 senses doesn’t exist. Somewhat Kafka-esque.
I applaud you for writing an article like this and challenging the authorities that apparently have so much power on our lives. As one commenter alluded, watching the sunset too close is not without consequences. How did we get here and why are there so few questioning the bizarreness of it all?
Not only is this article irresponsible, it is incorrect on several points. Fauci never talked about a new chinese virus in the fall. The fall would be this same virus, being seasonal. Especially if people go back to normal too soon. If you think this is some plot to make people stay at home, ask yourself, who benefits from people losing jobs and savings. The politicians? No. The people? No. Nobody, that’s who. So why the conspiracy? This is just a bad situation and doctors, nurses and epidemiologists are doing everything they can to save lives every day. This is garbage journalism and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the novel coronavirus “very well might” become cyclical and the US needs to be prepared for it to return seasonally, MSN reported. This coronavirus came from Wuhan China.
Why do the facial expressions of Newsom remind me of the mad man comedian Jim Carey ?
Here we have bureaucrats ( who can still go to work ) telling the rest of us that we can’t. Gov. Newsom’s head has gotten too big for his hat. He is so in love with himself ,cuz he’s on TV everyday, trying to be better than POTUS. We the People have accepted our ‘sentence’ for now. BUT he should know that there’s not enough LE to control what is coming. That’s all.
Please ????
Every smart professional from CA knows that we are likely to go back to work by end of May/beginning of June. Glad to have our Governor in charge so much better than that Trump Press Circus ???? American see every day????
It is time for us to remove Newsom from office. He is a leftist dictator who is nothing more than power hungry. His daily life isn’t affected so what does he care? I watched cops give a man a ticket for running next to the beach this morning. He is now using the border patrol to enforce beach closures. Wake up people, or we won’t have any freedom. This is unacceptable in the United States.
Why do freedom loving people stay in this state?
Well said but its not just homeless vagrants, they have decided to release convicted criminals. So while responsible law abiding residents are placed in House Arrest the mentally ill and known criminals are set out on our streets -all because London Breed, Garcetti, and Newsom “care” so much about our health and welfare -they’re the good despots I guess. All that based on a lie designed to terrorize the population -wait I guess that makes Newsom a Terrorist -isn’t that justification for recall and criminal action! It surly cannot be a mistake any longer it is well known that the numbers he’s spouting are fraudulent. Let’s see he has declared himself the head of a “Nation State”, has used terror to imprison an entire population without due process even without telling them what crime they have supposedly committed, and he has released the streets to his thugs, criminals and insane. Sounds like an enemy of the State to me. And John, yes his facial expressions do – I wondered what weird maniac he reminds me of as he grins while telling us that 840000 Californians will die.