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3/18/20: COVID LAW – PARTIAL PARTIAL MARTIAL

Clyde Lewis | March 18, 2020

MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

I have been seeing a lot of speculation in social media that showcase a number of theories about what is next for the United States as we are seeing more of a crackdown on social distancing and shelter in place. There are many that are worried that the next step is martial law and there are those, mostly who do not know how to spell the word martial telling people that we are already in a state of martial law.

Now I am not surprised that this is happening because when you see many national guard Humvees move through the neighborhood it is a chilling reminder of what has been seen in movies like The Siege and The Stand.

As of Tuesday, more than 1,500 Guard personnel in 22 states were called up to aid efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 as the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11, with President Donald Trump following two days later to classify the virus as a national emergency.

At the moment there is no reason to set up what is called the martial law framework and therefore we are not is a state of martial law.

In simple terms, martial law is the replacement of civil rule with temporary military authority in a time of crisis. While its imposition is rare, the United States does have several noteworthy instances where martial law came into play, including in times of war, natural disasters and civic disputes.

Though there is no precise definition of martial law, the precedent in the United States holds that under it, “certain civil liberties may be suspended, such as the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom of association, freedom of movement, and the writ of habeas corpus – the right to a trial before imprisonment may be suspended.

Legally speaking, we are not under martial law but we seem to be implementing it in spirit, meaning that if local governments wish to impose many of the privileges they have without checks and balances you may see the rise of many state dictators who are using COVID-19 as an excuse to enact unconstitutional laws.

Martial law can be declared by both the president and by Congress. The governor of a state may also declare martial law if it is included in that state’s constitution. However, Congress has never solely imposed it.

Americans who seem to be clamoring for it do not know enough about it to demand anything but what is being handled by law enforcement at this time.

In extreme circumstances, there is an exception: the Insurrection Act, which allows the use of active-duty or National Guard troops for federal law enforcement in cases when “rebellion against the authority of the U.S. makes it impracticable to enforce the laws of the U.S. by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” according to U.S. Northern Command.

The president has named the coronavirus a “major disaster” under the Stafford Act, which enumerates how the federal government can handle emergency responses, which no president has ever done before in response to a health epidemic. While much of the coronavirus response falls under the purview of federal government, “enforcing” laws relating to public health and safety falls squarely within the powers of the states under the Tenth Amendment.

The Tenth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to further define the balance of power between the federal government and the states. The amendment says that the federal government has only those powers specifically granted by the Constitution. These powers include the power to declare war, to collect taxes, to regulate interstate business activities and others that are listed in the articles.

Any power not listed, says the Tenth Amendment, is left to the states or the people.

We reported that most of what is being carried out is at the discretion of state government – all other declarations would be from the president with approval from Congress.

The president has named the coronavirus a “major disaster” under the Stafford Act, which enumerates how the federal government can handle emergency responses, which no president has ever done before in response to a health epidemic. While much of the coronavirus response falls under the purview of federal government, “[enforcing] laws relating to public health and safety falls squarely within the powers of the states under the Tenth Amendment,” The Atlantic reported.

As such, states would most likely need to put in requests for Stafford Act declarations for COVID-19 relief.

For now, no major mobilizations have occurred, and the power to call up the National Guard remains with the states, including for drill weekends and other duties.

That can change of course, as we are in a partial martial law condition, things can certainly go south quickly.

President Trump now claims the power to quarantine individuals suspected of being infected by the virus and,, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease.” He can even call out the military to cordon off a US city or state.

Now, as I had predicted there are local authoritarians that are taking advantage of their new powers.

The mayor of Champaign, Illinois, signed an executive order declaring the power to ban the sale of guns and alcohol and cut off gas, water, or electricity to any citizen. The governor of Ohio just essentially closed his entire state.

The Mayor of New Orleans signed a couple of emergency orders that can restrict the sale or transportation of alcohol and firearms.

The Second Amendment Foundation isn’t thrilled with state officials that are using a virus to specifically infringe the second amendment. The SAF penned a response to the mayor’s office, informing them that if they don’t fix that language in the new declaration then they’ll be taken to court:

“The presence of a nasty disease does not suspend any part of the Bill of Rights, no matter what some municipal, state or even federal politician may think.

While we certainly recognize the seriousness of this virus and its ability to spread rapidly, treating Covid-19 and taking steps to prevent it from infecting more people has nothing at all to do with the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.”

Governments love crises because when the people are fearful they are more willing to give up freedoms for promises that the government will take care of them.

In the wake of the COVID 19 outbreak, it is impossible to know the attitudes of everyone in the chaos; however, the mainstream media has captured an overall attitude of dissonance that could echo for more that the initial 15 days of hell that the government has imposed on the entire country.

For example Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health is now reporting to congress that the death rate for the coronavirus is ten times that of the seasonal flu.

It was reported on CNN this morning that 1 in 10 people who are elderly can die from corona virus.

The population of Americans age 65 or older is around 52 million.

The expectation that a “majority” of a population will become infected reflects a worst-case scenario about who encounters whom, something modelers call “homogeneous mixing.” But even the more realistic assumption that not everyone mixes with everyone else means that “at least a quarter to a half of the population will very likely become infected.

This does not bode well for the young who have decided to run to the beaches for spring break. Many have thrown caution to the wind to be irresponsible and partying, however, ethics is one of those things that have not learned in their young adulthood.

With all of virtue signaling of the young and the liberal you would think that they would be more considerate of others – but as we can see the cancel culture and the young virtuous are hypocrites.

It all boils down to entitlement and while the young have been in control with their hashtag activism—it may be time to put in check the so called “wisdom of the young” when it comes to the situation we are in now.

This would be an excuse to implement martial law, a way to clear the beaches to cancel the cancel culture.

Ignoring the government at this time while they are allegedly going easy on us will certainly embolden lawmakers to push for more controls on the public at large.

Are we now at a point in the United States where we don’t understand the implications of what martial law is or what Executive Orders and lists of American citizens marked for death means to the very liberty and well-being of the country?

I wonder if we have been desensitized to the idea that we would never implement an authoritarian rule that the fix is in.

Martial law is not simply an emergency declaration. It is the suspension of civil rights and assumption of all authority by the police or military, which in a democracy are supposed to be under civilian control.

The measure is so extreme that, on the national level, it has been imposed exactly once by Abraham Lincoln. Despite the obvious calamity posed by the Civil War, Lincoln’s imposition of martial law and suspension of habeas corpus remains controversial to this day.

It can get much worse on an international level as well.

The head of the Atlantic Council wrote an editorial this week urging NATO to pass an Article 5 declaration of war against the COVID-19 virus. This would be unnecessary but of course we see that there are some that are not satisfied until there are tanks in streets flexing their muscles against a tiny virus.

President Donald Trump announced in a March 18 White House briefing that he was invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to expand the supply of resources available to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.

The DPA allows the president to direct the production of private sector firms of critical manufactured goods to meet urgent national security needs.

Trump’s move seeks to marshal additional resources for America’s emergency response to COVID-19. This will hopefully increase production of masks, ventilators, and respirators, as well as expand hospital capacity to combat the outbreak.

This will hopefully increase production of masks, ventilators, and respirators, as well as expand hospital capacity to combat the outbreak.

Trump said he is signing the DPA measure, adding that it was being deployed “just in case” and that it “could do a lot of good things, if we need it.”

Again his statement sounds like he is hopeful that this will all burn out eventually.

The media of course criticizes Trump for his words that they feel are undermining the concern that Americans should have about the pandemic.

However, the CDC and the World Health Organization seems to delight in telling us the death tolls and stoking the fear that renders us incapable of movement.

It also gives an excuse for power hungry mayors and governors to abuse their authority with threats and unconstitutional decisions.

The reason many people are panicking is because with no information on what is next – people will do nothing – the best they can do is hunker down until the all clear is issued and what is sick is that this crisis can be milked for whatever can be gained for the production of a vaccine or even the implementation of emergency socialism.

The medical surveillance state is certainly in the cards and more reason to implement the new national ID card.

This is all on the table –and many people feel that the vaccine in production will be mandatory leading to thoughts of apocalyptic fantasies.

What is the most difficult thing right now is trying to get your head around the idea that  40 to 70 percent of the population will be infected within the next few months.

What the CDC won’t tell you and what opportunist authoritarians won’t concede is that this virus could peter out with the warmer temperatures that are coming this spring. We could also see a full on infection of the entire country and then we will see the virus die because there is nowhere for it to go.

There is always a vaccine – or a cocktail of antivirals that will kill it along with sunshine and fresh air – but there are no guarantees.

President Trump has been widely mocked for framing the outbreak, at least early on, as a problem that would disappear when the snow melts. But he wasn’t entirely off-base, experts have said.

 

Based on the epidemiological evidence currently available, there’s reason to believe that “with warmer, more humid weather” the virus will spread less efficiently, leading to a drop in cases, said Jeffrey Klausner, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles who previously worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With a reduction in cases, anxiety and panic will go down,” he added. “Severe illness will decrease, and we can go back to business as usual.”

Another ray of hope is that the Coronavirus diagnosis in China is declining and they may have found a drug that can help reduce the suffering.

A drug used in Japan to treat influenza seems to be effective at treating COVID-19, according to news reports.

The antiviral drug, called Favipiravir or Avigan, showed positive outcomes in clinical trials involving 340 individuals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, said Zhang Xinmin, of China’s science and technology ministry.

Patients in Shenzhen who had tested positive for COVID-19 and who were given the drug got a negative virus test back four days later, as a median (half showed a negative test earlier and half later than four days). That was compared with a negative test about 11 days later, as a median, for patients not on the drug, according to news reports. In that same trial, lung conditions (as shown in X-rays) improved in about 91% of patients taking Favipiravir, compared with just 62% who weren’t taking the antiviral drug. 

In the Wuhan trial, the drug also seemed to shorten the duration of a patient’s fever from an average of 4.2 days to 2.5 days, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.

If this is a ray of hope then perhaps someone should notify our leaders to look into the possibility of giving this drug to those who can tolerate it … otherwise we can continue down this road of economic ruin.

Otherwise, the pandemic could spread consistently through the summer— everyone who can get the virus does get it, until there’s no one left to infect—that is a worst case scenario.

This would mean that early every aspect of life—business, education, cultural activity, agriculture, productivity, mental health would be hit by likely irreparable damage. Without public gatherings, and at those numbers, it might be hard to even conduct funerals.

If the infection spreads widely enough, there’s no more people to become infected.

This is why we are seeing a decline in numbers of infected in China… the virus is burning through its fuel.

Meanwhile, Remdesivir, which was created by Gilead Sciences, has been reported as the most promising possible treatment for the virus because it is a “broad spectrum” drug that has shown effectiveness against various viral targets in lab testing.

Officials expect outcome data on remdesivir as early as April, and there have been promising studies in cell culture and animal models.

Once the data is available and presented to the FDA, you can expect that FDA approval would be within a few days to a couple of weeks.

That does not mean, that government officials with their new lust for power won’t bring back your rights anytime soon.

Manipulated data was an insurance policy for China to round up dissidents  and I can imagine Americans cashing their checks provided them by the government finding out that they owe fines or back taxes or have outstanding warrants.

Don’t think that getting money from the government is a “no questions asked’ operation.

It looks as if the new sense of American entitlement is the same age old American Exceptionalism that now has become an excuse for denial. It needs to be said that the Constitution is not some magical document that somehow has the power to zap away any and all enemies of it. It has no magical power and yet we as Americans believe that for some reason that it will always prevail when there is a demand that old fashioned fascism should step in and imprison and corporatize the state into a dark despotism.

The Constitution is no longer a safeguard from tyranny. Obviously the fear of a virus has shown this

Some American leaders see it as a necessity to suspend human rights despite the warnings of the founding fathers about what happens when this is accomplished.

The media also finds it within its scope of judgment not to question the motives of our elected officials even though we now know that some of our government leaders have now descended into the abyss of psychopathic oligarchy and will not stop until they control everything including what you eat, where you eat, who you have sex with, what drugs you take and what jobs you are destined for when they open up the new genetically monitored medical surveillance state.

We can understand a self-imposed quarantine – it is an ethical thing to do but self-imposed slavery and self-serving socialism, is what will give America it’s death sentence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Clyde Lewis




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