Americans Have Been Duped: No Legal Justification For Lockdown

Americans Have Been Duped: No Legal Justification For Lockdown

By Bill Sardi

June 5, 2020

“Mass quarantines are too blunt a tool, sweeping up many people
who pose no risk to the public.
Even under a declared public health emergency.”
The rule of law stands precisely to prevent the state
from depriving individuals of liberty based on
irrational or exaggerated public fear.
Civil confinement of individuals who have not committed an offense
is a massive deprivation of liberty that requires
a clear justification beyond public fear. 
–Lawrence O. Gostin and Eric A. Friedman, law professors at Georgetown University

Did the COVID-19 coronavirus “epidemic” ever pose such a threat to human life that the entire
population of the world needed to be locked down and quarantined?  Even in malnourished populations in 3^rd world countries that are expected to have weak immunity, there are far fewer COVID-19 coronavirus-related deaths than in the U.S., which suggests treatment-related deaths or over-reporting.

Some 380,000 worldwide Covid-19-related deaths later (Jun 2, 2020), with intentional padding of deaths by misclassification of other lung diseases (pneumonia, tuberculosis) as COVID-19 coronavirus-related deaths, and mistaken mixing of COVID-19 infected transfer of patients discharged from hospitals to nursing homes that literally became catacombs for the elderly,  and with only 6,060,000 laboratory confirmed cases (7.6 per 10,000 chance of infection, though admittedly many cases went unreported due to lack of testing), the other 7,893,940,000 people on the planet were quarantined to face weakened immunity (lack of sunshine vitamin D), social anxiety, despair, suicide and permanent loss of employment. The Big Nap: How We Fa... Simon, James Buy New $8.97 (as of 02:45 EDT - Details)
With the public realization they have been duped, demonstrators in Italy ditched masks in protest over their government’s lockdown restrictions intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus infections.
Public health authorities and politicians, seemingly oblivious to the fact the lack of vitamin D not only serves to explain the seasonal (winter) nature of the coronavirus infections and deaths, inexplicably failed to coach those individuals coming out of lockdown to prepare by taking vitamin D supplements, resulting in death rates that predictably rose due to quarantine-induced weakened immunity.
Haven’t we, as Americans, over the past 5 months, watched the news media in lock-step with public health authorities (CDC) and politicians, heighten public fear of a mutated virus-induced death in order to coerce the citizenry to voluntarily enter self-imposed quarantine, and were lured into ineffective health practices (hand washing, when the virus is spread by aerosol transmission), masks that do not block airborne viruses, and social distancing that did nothing to prevent high-risk groups (diabetics, obese, autoimmune, nursing home confined individuals) from dying of a horrible lung infection?
Obviously, the public didn’t recognize the disconnect.
And haven’t we all learned that high-risk COVID-19 candidates, such as diabetics, obese, autoimmune, nursing home-confined individuals, are the ones who should be targeted, isolated (home alone) or quarantined (with family), rather than the entire population, many whom have had their livelihoods taken away for good.

Tell Me How Hand Washing, Masks, Social Distancing And Lockdown Prevent Death From A Coronavirus That Strikes Diabetics, Obese And Nursing Home Confined Americans?

And haven’t we all learned, in lieu of a vaccine, that vitamins C and D and trace minerals zinc and selenium, serve to increase immunity to any and all threatening pathogenic bacteria or viruses.  And that vaccines, as efficacious as they are touted to be, still don’t protect from all prevalent infectious diseases (tuberculosis, enteroviruses, coronaviruses, malaria, Epstein-Barr virus, HIV, others) and may never protect against these diseases.
Now a counter-government group ANTIFA, which is certainly being monitored and infiltrated by federal security agencies, is wreaking havoc in the streets of America, mayhem that is being broadcast on TV which encourages others to riot.  Americans are being forced back into their homes with curfews now.  When will Americans be sent their get-out-of-jail cards?
Cut off the TV coverage and the rioters don’t come out of the woodwork to steal TV sets out of Target stores in demand reparations for alleged racism (in a country that elected a black President, suffered through a civil war to prevail over slavery and wrote a Constitution that proclaimed all men are created equal).
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Legalities of quarantines, lockdown and isolation
The legalities of quarantines, individual isolation and mass public lockdowns were first centered around individuals, not populations.
The disease in question was tuberculosis, not a flu virus.
Any count of COVID-19 coronavirus deaths is pale compared to tuberculosis.  Historically, tuberculosis killed Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederic Chopin and George Orwell.  According to a report in the American Journal of Roentgenology (2008), two billion people are infected with TB.  Every year there are 450,000 news cases of multi-drug resistant TB.  The cure rate is 50-80%.  More than 50% of drug-resistant TB sufferers will die within 5 years of diagnosis.
A great effort has gone into protecting the human and legal rights of individual patients. Once they develop the active form of TB, they must submit to six months of multi-antibiotic treatment.  The confinement of TB patients is limited by law to 180 days (6 months) because that is the course of antibiotics to effect a cure.  If stricken with multi-drug resistant TB, permission for the patient to matriculate in society must be curtailed.
There are many published rules of law and policy (CDC) regarding the confinement of individuals with tuberculosis.  Individuals with TB have far more rights than COVID-19 patients who are treated as a group.
These rules pertain to individuals, who have the right to a hearing before a judge to appeal a confinement order by public health officials.  Also, the TB patient who refuses treatment may be confined to coerce them to take antibiotics.
According to an article in the Health & Human Rights Journal: “Even among the few patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis who pose a health threat to society, even incarceration of such patients as a ‘last resort’ is considered a violation of human rights law.”
America has ~14 million people, mostly immigrants born in foreign lands, with latent (non-communicable TB) that may erupt at any time into a transmissible lung disease.  These people are walking time bombs and Trojan horses for any country.  Their disease is kept dormant by their immune system.  But a long winter without natural sunshine vitamin D and low dietary intake of zinc, selenium and vitamin C, may induce eruption of the TB bacterium.
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Rationale for isolation of TB patients
According to Ross Upshur MD, writing in Virtual Mentor (2003) on The Ethics of Quarantine, distinguishes quarantine from isolation.  Isolation is restriction of movement of an infected individual for a period of time, for example, a patient who has active tuberculosis and antibiotic treatment requires six months of antibiotic treatment, which determines the length of confinement or isolation; whereas quarantine is separation of exposed individuals who are not yet symptomatic for a period of time (the known incubation period of a suspected pathogen) to determine whether they develop symptoms.
Upshur identifies four principles that must be met in order to justify limitation of one’s autonomy:

1) clear and potential harm from diseases that are spread person to person from diseases that are not (anthrax);

2) the least-restrictive means must be observed;

3) reciprocity must be upheld (society must assist the infected to comply with this restriction;

4) transparency, that is, public health authorities must have an obligation to communicate clearly the justification for their actions and allow the process of appeal.

Rationale for lockdown of entire populations
In regard to mass large-scale quarantine of populations, Upshur asks three major questions:

1. Do public and medical analyses warrant the imposition of large-scale quarantine?
2. Is implementation and maintenance of large-scale quarantine feasible?
3. Do the potential benefits outweigh possible adverse consequences? Vaccine Epidemic: How ... Best Price: $7.50 Buy New $12.99 (as of 06:30 EST - Details)

In essence, this worldwide lockdown was unprecedented, harmed the poor to the point of disruption of supply chains that now threaten their lives via starvation (three quarters of the human population on earth earns less than $5 a day), and the length of the lockdown has continued beyond the point of no return.
Now all the safety nets of society are crumbling to the point where many human populations are existing on the cusp of starvation, ill-health induced by the indoor lockdown itself (blood clots, pneumonia, anxiety, depression, and vitamin D deficiency that results in a panoply of maladies); and the destruction of all safety nets in society itself (hospital closures; doctor’s office closures, shortage of medicines, etc.).  This is inexcusable and would only be put into practice by those who use this as a societal weapon.
Quarantine called a “blunt instrument.”
But without a vaccine, Lawrence O. Gostin, writing in HEALTH AFFAIRS (March 10, 2020, prior to the national lockdown which was initially voluntary), says the World Health Organization (WHO) has shifted away from defending individual freedom of movement, trade and travel as well as individual human rights.
The WHO has resorted to medieval methods to prevent the spread of infectious disease to the point where quarantined populations have no jobs, businesses, or careers, let alone food, to return to after the lockdown period.   Now the freedom of movement of individuals in whole cities and countries would be restricted, what is called a cordon sanitaire, a health practice dating back to the 17^th century.  The authority to order a cordon sanitaire is delegated to state and local agencies, the federal government having limited powers, says Gostin.
Gostin writes:

“A mass cordon sanitaire would violate state public health statutes, as well as core constitutional safeguards. Courts certainly would uphold well-targeted isolation (individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19) or quarantine (individuals known to be exposed), but large-scale restrictions of liberty would be overbroad and disproportionate.
Civil commitment of persons with mental illness is an apt model. The Supreme Court calls civil commitment a “massive curtailment of liberty,” requiring individualized risk assessments based on clear and convincing evidence.
Quarantine for tuberculosis, as one court explained, “impinges on the right to ‘liberty, full and complete liberty,’ no less than involuntary commitment for being mentally ill.” States must also demonstrate no less restrictive alternative exists and guarantee due process of law.

Gostin goes on to say: Miller’s Review ... Miller, Neil Z. Best Price: $8.32 Buy New $14.48 (as of 04:45 EST - Details)

“Mass quarantines are too blunt a tool, sweeping up many people who pose no risk to the public. Even under a declared public health emergency, it is hard to envisage the courts upholding such a far-reaching restriction of liberty.”

In 2014 the American Constitution Society published a report concerning State Quarantine Powers Under The Constitution, by Lawrence O. Gostin and Eric A. Friedman, law professors at Georgetown University.  They wrote: “

But the rule of law stands precisely to prevent the state from depriving individuals of liberty based on irrational or exaggerated public fear. Legal standards on the state’s police powers to protect the public’s health and safety are well developed. Civil confinement of individuals who have not committed an offense is a massive deprivation of liberty that requires a clear justification beyond public fear.  State statutes and constitutional law require sound scientific evidence of significant risk, reflecting a delicate balance between public health and civil liberties. Current quarantines (and calls for travel bans) are reminiscent of 19^th Century views of walling off borders, which is impossible in a modern globalized world.
Although the states undoubtedly have the authority to issue quarantine orders, the Supreme Court has set clear standards for civil confinement, recognizing that quarantines implicate fundamental liberty interests.
It is not enough that the individual belongs to a class of people who could present a risk.

New reports (propaganda) says government has right to quarantine
To the contrary, a report in the Washington Post (Feb 25, 2020) entitled “The government can quarantine you for coronavirus, and there’s almost nothing you can do about it,” states the CDC regulations “give health officials broad authority to quarantine anyone is isolate anyone ‘reasonably believed’ to have been exposed to a range of maladies, including cholera, infectious tuberculosis and flu’s that can cause a pandemic.  This exceptional power is rooted in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause that allows Congress to regulate foreign and interstate business.  Quarantine involves the temporary confinement of people who may have been exposed to a disease but haven developed symptoms; isolation separates people who are infected with a disease until they are no longer contagious.”
However, most legal discussions over quarantine refer to an individual, such as a person who has active tuberculosis. How Not To Die With Tr... Henriques, Tiago Best Price: $18.23 Buy New $17.97 (as of 08:00 EST - Details)
Contact tracing
Contact tracing has been employed for some time, such as when passengers on an airplane sitting within two rows of a subject with active TB are traced and tested for TB.  But now under guise of a coronavirus epidemic that is highly infectious but is only lethal to high risk individuals (diabetics, nursing home patients, healthcare workers, Blacks) mandatory contact tracing legislation via cell phone movement whether there is an epidemic in play or not, has been submitted to Congress, entirely removing the right to privacy in society.
Quarantine vs. Isolation
Al Tompkins, senior faculty at the Poynter Institute, writes that mass quarantines “could be effective tools for preventing the transmission of a disease that fits – at a minimum – two biological conditions:

1. It is often infectious before symptoms appear (COVID-19 coronavirus)
2. It is deadly or has other serious medical consequences

Poynter goes on to say it is useless to fight government over this because it has legal authority.  “Breakage of a federal quarantine is punishable by a fine or imprisonment, according to the CDC,” says Tompkins.  But that authority Tompkins refers to is, once again, over individuals, not the entire population.
Tompkins notes that 27% of states delegate the power to quarantine to state authorities; 18% of states give some power to local governments and the remaining 55% delegate to both.  State quarantine and isolation statutes can be accessed online.
Financial incentives if quarantines go overboard
A National Institutes of Health study says quarantine laws have to have incentives, measures to ensure job security if you are barred from going to work, and there should be a tiered enforcement plan so governments don’t go overboard.  Right now, only about 20% of states have any kind of job protection provisions in times of quarantines.  Again, this refers to the quarantine or isolation of an individual, not populations.
The NIH report concluded: “The current state level quarantine laws and regulations are outdated and insufficient to support an effective quarantine in present times.” (Journal Public Health Management & Practice July 1, 2019. Vitamin D3, Zinc and M... Jeffers, Nancy Best Price: null Buy New $6.98 (as of 03:40 EST - Details)
Lockdown will result in more disease
Lucica Ditiu, director of the STOP TB Partnership says she is sickened by research that predicted millions more people are now expected to contract the disease (TB) as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions.  These excess TB cases are predicted to result in 1.4 million more TB deaths!
Inoculate with vitamin D, not some viral particle
We have forgotten the medical and health lessons of the past.  American physician Dr. Harry Ingersoll Bowditch advocated fresh air outdoor treatment, even in winter for patients with lung infections.  That was in an era prior to the discovery of vitamin D (1922 by Sir Edward Mellanby).  After vitamin D was synthesized, it was narrowly used to treat rickets (soft bones), cod liver oil being a source in lieu of sunlight.  In the 1930s vitamin D became available as a food supplement and it was added to milk.  The rickets plague was over.  But physicians, thrilled with this discovery, failed to note rickets patients were also riddled with infectious disease.
It took till 2010 for researcher Michael F. Holick, writing in Public Health Reviews, to describe the lack of vitamin D deficiency as a “pandemic,” suggesting much larger doses be added to foods or taken as supplements to prevent infectious diseases as well as a long list of other maladies.  The problem is, modern medicine has intentionally ignored or resisted full resolution of this pandemic as it got hooked on treating disease rather than preventing it.  The world should be inoculating with vitamin D, not viral particles that are a little bit of disease themselves.
The World Health Organization has become a draconian institution, which along with the Centers for Disease Control, has become the handmaiden of pharmaceutical companies in proffering vaccination as the sole preventive measure for infectious disease.
A spokesperson for WHO says the COVID-19 coronavirus may never go away.

Copyright © Bill Sardi, writing from La Verne, California. This article has been written exclusively for www.LewRockwell.com and other parties who wish to refer to it should link rather than post at other URLs.

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