by Texas Senator Bob Hall
Post COVID Texas—Liberty Lost?
The death of approximately 1,500 Texans due to COVID-19 in the first five months of 2020 is unfortunate and alarming until put in perspective by comparing it to the 7,500 Texans who died with the flu.
Since COVID-19 was first identified in China in late 2019, there have been over 6,193,548 cases confirmed worldwide. As of June 1, 2020, there have been over 1,790,191 cases in the U.S., with 64,880 of those cases in Texas. Worldwide, 372,479 deaths have been reported, with 104,383 of them in the U.S. and 1,678 in Texas.
The numbers are frightening until you put them in perspective and realize that you are much more likely to die many ways other than COVID-19.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion people worldwide get the flu every year with 290,000 to 650,000 deaths of flu-related cases every year worldwide. In the U.S., the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that between 24,000 to 62,000 flu related deaths occurred this flu season. They are not sure of the exact numbers, because flu is not a required reportable disease in most parts of the U.S.
The CDC has recently revised the overall death rate for COVID-19. They now estimate a 0.4 percent fatality rate among the symptomatic cases. However, they also project that 35 percent of all cases are asymptomatic. That reduces the overall fatality rate scenario to 0.26 percent.
When news of the COVID-19 virus first began to surface, it was appropriate for government officials to push the pause button to get an idea of exactly what we were facing. In any circumstances, washing your hands and social distancing will help to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. It is not a bad first step. However rather than hitting a pause button, many states, Texas included, bypassed the pause button and hit the kill button instead.
The result was the destruction of one of the greatest economies in the nation and government intimidation through messages calculated to create fear and distrust in one’s neighbors. We have created a false fear making neighbors report on the activity of neighbors. Overreaching governments arrested and imprisoned individuals for daring to open a business offering services between a willing buyer and a willing seller–both of whom were able to calculate the personal risks to themselves when they entered into the transaction.
Now the state (and nation) are proposing egregious contact tracing schemes to track and control your movements. In what is being advertised as an “entirely voluntary” system, a positive COVID-19 test will trigger an investigation of you to reveal everywhere you have been and everyone you have been in contact with within a window of time prior to your testing. If you went to a restaurant, government officials have said they will look at restaurant seating logs to determine who you may have been in close proximity. The government may even review credit card receipts to determine who else was in the restaurant at the same time? If you happen to be one of the persons in the restaurant, will you be asked to self-isolate just because you have been in the same restaurant as someone who tested positive?
Don’t worry if the government asks you to self-isolate. They say they will provide services for you to “help” you do that. They will put you up in a hotel if you don’t have the room to self-isolate with a private bathroom. What if you have children and have to self-isolate? Will the government remove your children so they will not become infected? The answer to this is still unclear, but scary.
Remember, they are talking about doing this, not because you are sick, but because you may have been exposed to someone who has tested positive. (Remember 35 percent of cases are asymptomatic.) And, after you finish a 14-day quarantine, you can be sent back into quarantine the next day if someone else you have come in contact with tests positive. Then, 14 days later, rinse and repeat. There are no limits to how long you could be required to self-isolate.
There are two very troublesome things about this contact tracing scheme:
- Government personnel appear to be totally oblivious to the trampling of individual liberty and the resulting disruption to families; and
- There will be hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on an ill-conceived program that will not reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths.
Do you think that it is possible that the recent riots we are seeing in Texas and throughout the world are as much in response to the artificial COVID crisis as to the horrific death of George Floyd that has been said to trigger the events? People who have lost their jobs, their connections to society, their trust in government, and their ability to vent their frustrations just may have reached their limits.
What else is going to happen when people wake up and realize that they been manipulated into living in a glass bubble with the government tracking and monitoring their every move?
Is that really the Texas you want for your children and grandchildren to live in?
