As many US states struggle to roll-back their highly damaging lockdown policies, various complex technocratic ‘gating’ systems are now being devised by public health officials – all of them presumable designed to prevent a theoretical “second wave” of coronavirus infections and deaths. One such precondition is the call for “mass testing and contact tracing” for COVID-19. This is being proposed as a requirement for the lifting lockdown restrictions, supposedly until a vaccine or effective treatments arrive which are meant to rescue the public from the alleged unprecedented global pandemic. Most Americans have yet to question what this system of medical martial law really means in terms of basic rights and civil liberties. This issue may be coming to a head now.
During a recent press conference on May 12th, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee revealed his radical agenda for rolling out his statewide contact tracing program, saying that his initiative “is robust, it is vigorous and it is comprehensive, and it needs to be all three to be successful,” Inslee said. “If we do not succeed in this second stage of our efforts, this virus could come bright back and bite us.”
Again, Inslee is predicating his entire state strategy on the theory of a “second wave” of coronavirus ravaging the population if lockdown is lifted. However, this theory has been widely contested by other countries and epidemiological experts.
The other practical consideration is what good will mass testing do when it’s now well known that the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 victims are above the age of 75 with multiple comorbidities, and that most carriers in other age groups are asymptomatic and will never require any medical care after being infected with the virus. What is the point of tracking, tracing and quarantining the healthy in large numbers if the virus poses no significant threat to the wider population?