State 'police powers' cannot justify every single policy initiative.
Now into the third month of the coronavirus crisis, Americans are getting restless. Having for the most part accepted in March that fighting a pandemic with incomplete data required taking drastic steps, they now want the benefit of the lose-lose bargain that COVID-19 forced on them. We flattened the curve, the thinking goes, preventing our medical system from being overwhelmed—heck, health care workers are being laid off!—so now it's time to resume our lives and recoup as much as we can.
In other words, it's prudent in a pandemic to restrict activities that would otherwise bring people together in a way that facilitates viral transmission, but it doesn't mean governors get to"shut down" anything and everything on a whim. Recall that viral video of the guy running along the beach in California, chased by a hapless cop. Or that dad who got arrested for playing catch with his kids in a public park.
Just because certain expansive state actions are lawful at the outset of a pandemic doesn't mean they continue to be lawful for as long as the government wants to maintain them. A long-term shutdown of all productive activity, including most of what makes life sustainable and worth living, is unrealistic—and, as we're learning, unnecessary.
With unemployment going through the roof, why shut down landscaping businesses just as spring arrived? Why close outdoor recreational facilities? The benefit of sunlight and exercise outweighs the risk that a contagious stranger will sneeze in your face while you hike or apply mulch. My own city of Falls Church, Virginia, closed tennis courts—not even because tennis is dangerous, but because a busybody complained about teenagers congregating.
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