This is not my recommendation or hope. We are in my view far from needing to shoot anyone over anything.
I am just saying that never before in American history have people been prevented from working, prevented from earning a living, and at that over such a trivial nuisance. When the Spanish Flu hit, everyone KNEW it. It got into nearly every life in America. And even then nothing like this was attempted. Bars were closed after 6pm, but left open during the day. Businesses had restrictions, but not closure orders. People have to eat, and they have to get paid to do that, and they have to work to do that. This is not rocket science.
This thing, by my count, has increased the April mortality rate in my State by 4%. It was invisible in March, and will likely be invisible again by May. For that, we are ruining tens of millions of lives. Anger is inevitable, and need to be factored into all calculations.
And I will comment again, that the use of force eventually always produces an equal, opposite, and possibly superior reaction. The use of force by extremist citizens will provoke violence by the government. And vice versa. Do we really want to live in a world where all the cops need to be looking over their shoulders all the time, even at people they once trusted, and who once trusted them? Where people who once supported them now want to murder them?
That’s where we are heading, if things do not diverge rapidly from this disastrous course.
I am by nature mostly pro-cop, while recognizing that a percentage of them are no damn good, and that this is well known by all the people they work with. But cops in general have not acquitted themselves all that well in this thing, most notably in California. I read some Michigan cops are refusing to enforce some bans. That’s good. I would like to see more of that.
As I noted, I personally watched a young cop tell a young couple they couldn’t play tennis. Stupidity flows downhill. What makes societies work is local intelligence, local restraint, and the exercise at the ground level of common sense.
Anybody who is “just following orders” is doing no more or less than the Germans did under the Nazis, with much less justification.