Tag: hit&run

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to pay just compensation when it takes private property for a public use. Does that apply when the government orders a business to close its doors indefinitely in order to help prevent the spread of COVID-19? Is the shuttered business entitled to compensation for its troubles?

These are not hypothetical questions. Schulmerich Bells, a small outfit that makes handcrafted handbells and chimes in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Gov. Thomas Wolf’s order indefinitely closing all “non-life-sustaining” businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak. “The Governor has placed the cost of these Orders—issued for the benefit of the public—squarely upon the shoulders of private individuals and their families, and has failed to justly compensate affected parties for these takings undertaken for their benefit to the public,” the suit states. “These uncompensated seizures violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” The suit seeks the payment of just compensation by the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long said that the states may regulate—and even prohibit—certain property uses in the name of public health and safety without triggering the Takings Clause. In Mugler v. Kansas (1887), the Court ruled against a liquor manufacturer whose livelihood was destroyed when the state banned the sale and manufacture of “intoxicating beverages.” According to the Court, “a prohibition simply upon the use of property for purposes that are declared, by valid legislation, to be injurious to the health, morals, or safety of the community, cannot, in any just sense, be deemed a taking or an appropriation of property for the public benefit.” Such government action “does not disturb the owner in the control or use of his property for lawful purposes, nor restrict his right to dispose of it, but is only a declaration by the State that its use by any one, for certain forbidden purposes, is prejudicial to the public interests.”

Similarly, in Miller v. Schoene (1928), the Supreme Court upheld a Virginia law requiring the destruction of red cedar trees infected with cedar rust if those trees stood within two miles of an apple orchard (cedar rust is highly detrimental to apple trees). “The state does not exceed its constitutional powers by deciding upon the destruction of one class of property in order to save another which, in the judgment of the legislature, is of greater value to the public,” the Court said. “It will not do to say that the case is merely one of a conflict of two private interests and that the misfortune of apple growers may not be shifted to cedar owners by ordering the destruction of their property; for it is obvious that there may be, and that here there is, a preponderant public concern in the preservation of the one interest over the other.”

In short, if this particular lawsuit is going to succeed, it will have to clear some steep precedential hurdles.

Related: “Police Powers During a Pandemic, Constitutional, but Not Unlimited.”

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So reports Newsweek (Christina Zhao); there was an earlier article from Radio Free Asia (a U.S.-government-funded nonprofit) that gave similar estimates. (Bloomberg likewise writes, “Report of Urns Stacked at Wuhan Funeral Homes Raises Questions About the Real Coronavirus Death Toll in China.”)

These are just estimates, and may well be incorrect, but I thought they were worth noting given that the government-released data may be incorrect as well.

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During his COVID-19 briefing yesterday, President Donald Trump suggested that the control measures implemented so far should keep the number of deaths from climbing above 100,000 in the United States. Although that is “a horrible number,” he said, the death toll otherwise could be “up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that.”

Trump has pivoted from minimizing the severity of the epidemic to exaggerating the likely outcome in the absence of extreme measures such as mass business closures and stay-at-home orders. Appearing on CNN yesterday, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, offered some words of caution about worst-case scenarios that assume nothing is done to contain, suppress, or mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Jake Tapper asked Fauci how many COVID-19 cases the United States can expect to see. “To be honest with you, we don’t really have any firm idea,” Fauci said. “There are things called models. And when someone creates a model, they put in various assumptions. And the model is only as good and as accurate as your assumptions. And whenever the modelers come in, they give a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario. Generally, the reality is somewhere in the middle. I have never seen a model of the diseases that I have dealt where the worst-case scenario actually came out. They always overshoot. So when you use numbers like a million, a million-and-a-half, 2 million [deaths], that almost certainly is off the chart. Now, it’s not impossible, but very, very unlikely.”

Those caveats are important because focusing on implausible worst-case projections creates a bias in favor of sweeping and prolonged interventions, which impose enormous costs that might not be justified based on more realistic expectations. In the world we live in, as opposed to the one imagined by modelers when they talk about millions of COVID-19 deaths in the United States, many steps already have been taken to curtail the spread of the virus. These include not just government policies, such as isolation and quarantine, air travel restrictions, and bans on large gatherings, but also voluntary precautions, such as limiting social interactions, working at home, and paying extra attention to hygiene.

When modelers at Imperial College projected 2.2 million COVID-19 deaths in the United States, they were assuming “the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour.” Although that horrifying number got a lot of attention and has now been embraced by Trump, it was never plausible, even leaving aside the question of whether the case fatality rate (CFR) assumed by the model (0.9 percent) will prove to be correct.

The choice confronting policy makers right now is not between doing “nothing,” as that projection assumed, and maintaining lockdowns “for 5 months or more” (or perhaps for “18 months or more”), as the Imperial College report suggested. Rather, the choice involves what kinds of restrictions make sense, where, and for how long.

“Looking at what we’re seeing now,” Fauci said, “we’re going to have millions of cases” in the United States, and it is reasonable to expect “between 100,000 and 200,000” deaths. But he cautioned that “I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection, when it’s such a moving target, that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people.” Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House’s COVID-19 task force, yesterday cited similar but somewhat less alarming estimates, saying “between 80,000 and 160,000, maybe even potentially 200,000 people,” could be killed by COVID-19 in the United States.

One unknown variable in these projections is how many Americans will ultimately be infected. Some projections “predicted half of the United States would get infected,” Birx said. Another crucial variable is the CFR, which federal public health officials say could be anywhere from 0.1 percent (about the same as the CFR for the seasonal flu) to 1 percent. If half the population were infected and 2.2 million people died, that would imply a CFR of about 1.3 percent, substantially higher than the upper limit of that range—another reason to be skeptical of the worst-case scenario.

Such a high CFR also suggests that the actual number of infections is only about two-fifths bigger than the current number of documented cases, which is highly implausible when testing is so sparse and cases typically involve mild to nonexistent symptoms. “Probably for every case,” Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir estimated earlier this month, “there are at least two or three cases that are not even in the denominator.”

Based on the available data, which are very limited in the absence of wide testing, it surely is not safe to assume that COVID-19 is only slightly more deadly than the seasonal flu. But neither is it reasonable to assume that the disease is 13 times as deadly. The truth, as Fauci says, is likely to be “somewhere in the middle.” In the face of such uncertainty, decisions with profound economic consequences should not be based on one extreme or the other. “Although people like to model it,” Fauci told Tapper, “let’s just look at the data of what we have, and not worry about these worst-case and best-case scenarios.”

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Or so says an article in Stab Magazine (apparently a publication about surfing). An excerpt with some policy analysis (the article also has more on the facts):

Kelly makes some great points about how arresting officers grabbing surfers could exacerbate the spread of covid-19 (certainly more so than the physical act of surfing). And, also to his point, it makes no sense for the ocean to be closed before retail spaces. But on the point that people should be allowed to surf throughout this crisis (especially if they keep their distance), Kelly is wrong….

If people are allowed to surf (even at a safe distance from one another), it will lead to a mass migration of surfers from all surrounding areas to the beach. This is especially true since everyone is out of work and wants something to keep their minds and bodies occupied. Also, we’re coming into a holiday week/end around the world, which will only add to the chaos.

Now, even if we were to assume that not a single person around the world could or would contract covid-19 while in the water (which is a very weak assumption), what about all the hotels, gas stations, coffee shops, public bathrooms, and other disease-incubating amenities that will inevitably be flooded by these migratory surfers?

If you could somehow enforce a law that only people who lived within walking distance of the beach were allowed to surf, it would probably be fine for them to do so. But of course that’s not logistically feasible, so closing all beaches (and their adjacent waves) is the only logical step our government can take if they’re serious about stopping the spread.

Thanks to Jenny Wilson for the pointer.

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I visited China on a press junket 10 years ago, before Premier Xi Jinping arrived on the scene and ended his country’s brief flirtation with perestroika (“authoritarian deliberation,” in academic parlance). Even during that golden age of openness, Beijing’s autocrats clearly controlled the messaging about everything. Every official at every level of government we met gave the exact same answer to every question, as if reading talking points from a national memo.

China’s talking points now seem to have gone international, if the headlines about its allegedly stellar success in fighting the coronavirus are any indication. The World Health Organization went on a “fact-finding trip” to the country and came back congratulating it on its “unique and unprecedented public health response.” Yale University’s Nicholas Christakis has dubbed Chinese autocrats’ ability to restrict the movement of hundreds of millions of people “deeply impressive.” He added that China’s “collectivist culture and…authoritarian government” had “allowed this enormous, widespread response.” (The Uighurs might have a different point of view.) The New York Times‘ Donald McNeil has praised China’s “enormous success in beating down its epidemic” compared to America’s sluggish response.

But China might not be revealing the full human cost of its totalitarian tactics.

It is clear now that authorities in Wuhan, the town of 11 million where the disease originally broke out, kept denying that human-to-human transmission was happening even after 739 people, including 419 medical staff, had become infected (a claim that the World Health Organization, to its eternal shame, endorsed until mid-January). They closed the live animal market where the disease had originated—without any notice or explanation to the perplexed vendors—and called it a day. The doctor who raised an alarm and tried to warn his international colleagues was booked for “severely disturbing the social order” and put under house arrest. (He died in February from the virus.) The scientists who proved this was a new and serious disease were forced to destroy their samples and branded “rumormongers.” If researchers in other countries had been allowed access to those samples, we might be closer to a cure or a vaccine by now. All of this allowed the disease to spread freely for almost two months in China and beyond.

Had the Chinese authorities been open even three weeks sooner, a study by U.K’s University of Southampton assessed, the number of corornavirus cases could have been reduced by 95 percent and the world may well have been spared a pandemic. Why didn’t they do so? It’s not because they wanted to infect the world, as conspiracy theorists are claiming; it’s not because they have strange culinary habits, as xenophobes are nattering. It’s because the country’s closed system blocked the flow of information and thwarted the spontaneous alarm systems that open societies have.

To be sure, President Donald Trump also initially downplayed the threat. And federal bureaucrats repeatedly blocked the University of Washington’s Helen Chu from pursuing her suspicions that the disease had made an appearance in her state. But Chu, in contrast to the Chinese doctor, has become a national hero, and the Trump administration has been severely criticized for ignoring such early warnings.

This experience will be a lesson for future administrations. But China, unlike America, has a long history of epidemics and yet seems to have learned no lessons at all. Some of the most devastating flu pandemics of the 20th century—such as the Asian flu of 1957, which killed 1.1 million people worldwide and 116,000 in the U.S.—originated in China. More recently, China generated the bird flu and SARS. Yet its first instinct is to shoot the messenger, given that it imprisoned the doctor who raised the alarm during SARS too.

Why do the Chinese rulers keep making the same mistake over and over again? Because authoritarian regimes care about the survival of their people only to the extent that it ensures their own survival. Opening channels for the hoi polloi to communicate creates too many dangerous possibilities for subversion. But the absence of these channels also means that China’s autocracy can use ruthless measures to combat the crisis without fearing public criticism—let alone a revolt—when it so chooses.

And, boy, was it ruthless.

Once Xi woke up to the corona threat, he declared war not so much on the virus as on the Chinese people themselves, using high-tech surveillance and social control to monitor every move, every action. As leaders in other countries pleaded with their people to stay at home and self-quarantine, his Communist authorities moved with lighting speed to lock down 60 million Chinese in the Hubei province—most of who had no idea that an epidemic was brewing, thanks to aggressive censorship. They also mobilized the country’s omnipresent army of monitors to keep tabs on every move of every Hubei resident without any regard for individual privacy or human rights.

They required popular apps like AliPay and WeChat, China’s Venmos, to install software to track users’ movements. China Telecom color-coded phones in traffic-light red, green, and yellow, based on their risk of carrying the virus. This let guards at train station checkpoints know who to let through and who to stop.

Pharmacies were told to take the temperature of anyone who bought cold medicine and notify authorities of the results. Every apartment building and every residential complex implemented something called “closed management.” Using private cars was banned, and residents were barred from leaving the complex without permission, which was given for only a few hours a day to one family member to purchase essentials. Meanwhile, 300,000 “grid workers”—paid employees of the Communist Party and volunteers—patrolled the streets and guarded complexes. Those who didn’t cooperate were promptly reported to the local police.

Local governments outside Hubei offered hundred of dollars in rewards to those who reported returning migrant workers from Wuhan and family members who hosted them. In other words, neighbors were rewarded for snitching on neighbors. More chillingly, authorities reportedly barged into homes, and hauled away sick patients, and put them in quarantine camps. In one eastern province, they barricaded a family that had returned from Wuhan, essentially imprisoning it in its home.

China has dazzled the world by building two hospitals in 10 days and many quarantine shelters by employing (read: conscripting) thousands of people round the clock. As an authoritarian country, China could single-mindedly focus on one goal—containing the spread of the disease. Its primary purpose in building hospitals and quarantine shelters was separating and isolating patients, not necessarily treating them or helping them. (One of those rapidly built quarantine hotels collapsed, killing 10.)

In democratic countries, by contrast, the policy response has focused on both containment and treatment. Even as states have imposed lockdowns or quarantines to flatten the curve, they have also simultaneously tried to boost their treatment capacity to maintain their standards of care.

Over the past few weeks, the world has been horrified by stories from hard-hit Western countries like Italy and Spain about doctors having to do a grim triage to determine whether to save the young or the old, the healthy or those with preexisting conditions. In America, it’s a national scandal that not every patient who needs a ventilator might get one. But in China, the government essentially performed an even grimmer triage with entire towns and provinces. The New York Times‘ Javier Hernandez reports that there is a widespread sense among Wuhan residents that they were sacrificed to save the country.

The Chinese government is trying to tell us that it heroically stopped corona. Instead of falling for it, the world should question the spin. Only when China’s autocrats open themselves to scrutiny—both by a robust domestic press and outside media—will the world have any confidence that they are serious about avoiding the next pandemic. So far, they aren’t offering any cause for optimism.

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Faced with nationwide closures and an empty release schedule, movie theaters are asking for bailout money. The chief of the theater owner’s lobby pitched it this way: As public gathering places, theaters are uniquely affected by the spread of COVID-19, and also comparatively inexpensive to prop up. The theater industry hasn’t named a dollar figure, but for less than the price of bailing out one airline, you could save the entire theater industry, he told The New York Times. What’s one more airplane brand next to the magic of the silver screen? Besides, people will need someplace to go when it’s all over.

I am a little bit sympathetic to this line of thinking. I rarely fly, but I see movies frequently. Over the course of my life, movie theaters have provided me with thousands of hours of escape, entertainment, and engagement, both by myself and in the company of others. I genuinely believe that theaters, as director Christopher Nolan recently wrote, are a “vital part of social life.” 

Still, I have to wonder: Have any of these people seen Bloodshot? 

Bloodshot is a PG-13 action film starring Vin Diesel, based on a somewhat obscure comic book from the 1990s, directed by a first-timer with a background in computer animation. If you asked a machine learning program to survey the last several years of theatrical releases and then generate its own by algorithm, it would probably come up with something like this. Bloodshot is very nearly the median Hollywood film. 

The movie was initially released in theaters two weeks ago, playing on about 2,800 movie screens domestically. Since then, a few things have changed. 

Today, barely any movie theaters are still open in the United States. As a result, many movies that were scheduled to open in the next several months have been delayed until after our viral apocalypse. In the meantime, several recent theatrical releases have found their way to video on demand. Normally this takes months, since theater owners have negotiated an exclusivity period with movie studios. But what’s a theatrical release window when there are no theaters to release into? 

That is why, for a mere $19.99, you can now own-to-stream a 4k digital copy of Bloodshot from Amazon, iTunes, and other fine purveyors of high-quality ones and zeroes.

It’s appropriate for a movie about a soldier given a digital rebirth. Diesel plays Ray Garrison, who is resurrected after losing both his wife and his life on a mission abroad. In his reincarnated form, he’s a supersoldier held together by nanites, tiny bio-machines that rapidly heal wounds and give him super strength. Naturally, he seeks revenge, and with the help of a similarly super-powered squad of nano-soldiers, brought together by Dr. Emil Harting, a twitchy scientist played by Guy Pearce, he embarks on a mission to take down the sociopathic Martin Axe (Toby Kebbell), who stole everything from him. 

From there, the movie goes roughly where you expect it to go—and then, perhaps, a little further, with a twist that essentially turns into a kind of over-muscled sci-fi action-movie riff on Groundhog Day, albeit without the wit or light-footedness that made Edge of Tomorrow so enjoyable. Connoisseurs of slow-motion punching will no doubt appreciate the many slow-motion punches, along with the reasonably competent action scenes that director David S.F. Wilson builds with them. Generally speaking, you can tell what’s going on, which is high praise for today’s mid-budget action movies. 

As Garrison, Diesel spends the movie hulking and glowering in hopes that this will serve as a rough substitute for acting. He has a volcanically low voice that will challenge even the most competent subwoofer, but it’s the only place his character shows signs of depth. You learn more about Garrison from the various performance monitors set up in Dr. Hartin’s lab than from Diesel’s one-note performance. At one point, the camera cuts to a screen purporting to monitor his “brain activity.” It’s low. 

In some ways, this is just par for the course for Diesel—an international superstar thanks to the Fast and the Furious franchise, but better understood as B-movie brawn. He has frequently dabbled in modestly budgeted action cheese. This has occasionally produced high-quality results, as in Pitch Black…but it has also occasionally given us movies like The Last Witch Hunter. (With a title like that, one can at least take solace in the hope that there won’t be any sequels.).  

Diesel has a predilection for gloomy pulp, the sort of enjoyable trash that’s best enjoyed in a college dorm room around 2 a.m. or as a television matinee on an afternoon spent channel surfing or app browsing. Bloodshot is no exception. It’s a movie that was intended for theaters, and it even briefly surfaced in them. But it works better at home, from the comfort of one’s own couch, probably while keeping a distracted eye on one’s phone. It’s not a movie that needs to be watched so much as one that you wouldn’t mind having on. Bloodshot is not a great movie by any means, but watching it from the comfort of my basement living room, I thought: This is not too bad. 

I like movies—especially movies seen in a theater—as much as anyone. I hope our theaters reopen soon. And I genuinely worry that if this pause in theatrical viewing extends long enough, it will ultimately eliminate much of the theatrical experience as we have always known it. But I am also mindful of the potential for salutary effects from this otherwise awful scenario. 

It’s true, as the theater owners say, that when this stay-at-home nightmare is over, people will need someplace to go. But no one needs to go out to see a replacement-level actioner like Bloodshot. Perhaps, in our post-viral rebirth, movies like this will more frequently find a fast route to the couch-based viewing where they are best appreciated. 

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From Lakewood (N.J.), where there has been a good deal of noncompliance with the ban on gatherings, and police response to such noncompliance (see here and here for past incidents):

Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer and Lakewood Township Police Chief Gregory Meyer announced that on Sunday, March 29, 2020, Eliezer Silber, 37, and Miriam Silber, 34, both of Lakewood, were charged with five counts of Child Endangerment in violation of N.J.S.A. 9:6-1.

On March 29, 2020, members of the Lakewood Township Police Department were summoned to a residence on Alamitos Drive for a report of a gathering of people blocking the street.  This gathering was in violation of Executive Order No. 107 signed by Governor Phil Murphy on March 21, 2020, which bans gatherings of individuals, whether they be at weddings, parties, celebrations, or other social events.

Upon arrival, Officers discovered a gathering of approximately 40-50 people, including children, on the front lawn and in the street in front of the residence.  The Officers ordered the crowd to disperse, and made contact with the owners of the residence, Eliezer and Miriam Silber.  Eliezer Silber was charged with Violating Any Rule or Regulation Adopted by the Governor in violation of APP.A: 9-49h, as well as Endangering the Welfare of his five children who were at the gathering.  Miriam Silber was likewise charged with Endangering the Welfare of her five children.  They are both required to appear at a future court date in Ocean County Superior Court.

“As I have previously stated, it is my sworn duty to protect all of the residents of Ocean County.  That obligation applies across the board,” stated Prosecutor Billhimer.  “My Office will prosecute any individual who defies or breaks the law, State of Emergency or otherwise.  Everyone must respect and follow the law,” the Prosecutor stated.  “The men & women of the Lakewood Police Department have done an exceptional job in the face of a public health crisis. Their efforts are truly commendable,” Prosecutor Billhimer concluded.

The public and media are reminded that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Thanks to Larry Seltzer for the pointer.

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If, like me, you’ve received not one but three mailings from the U.S. Census Bureau proclaiming “Your Response Is Required By Law,” you’re probably wondering whether to respond, toss the questionnaire in the trash, or fill it with bogus information. We’re in good company, since about a third of households plan to ignore the census, according to the government itself.

In the past, I’ve filled in preposterous answers, then repeated them with a straight face when a harried-looking census field worker knocked on my door (that’s a pleasure I’ll miss this year, with in-person interviews suspended). It’s good fun, it denies potentially dangerous information to a government agency that has a history of misusing the data it collects and, if repeated far and wide, it might spur nosy bureaucrats to try something less intrusive.

Less intrusive would be nice. Census questions, you may have noticed, go a bit beyond the simple head count authorized by the Constitution. Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution specifies an “actual Enumeration … within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

There’s nothing in there about demanding names, the types of our homes, the nature of our relationships with the people with whom we live, our ethnicity, or the details of our finances (if you were unlucky enough to get the old long form or the modern American Community Survey). That’s all just bureaucratic curiosity.

Our answers are supposed to be confidential.

“The Census Bureau cannot release any identifiable information about you, your home, or your business, even to law enforcement agencies. The law ensures that your private data is protected and that your answers cannot be used against you by any government agency or court,” the Census Bureau website assures us.

If only that were true. In reality, laws change, and governments use information however they please once they have it—sometimes in nasty ways.

“Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II,” Scientific American reported in 2007. “The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war.”

More recently, “the Census Bureau provided neighborhood data on Arab-Americans to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2002,” the article added.

So when the Census Bureau frets that “fewer than seven in ten householders said they intend to fill out the census form,” with many Americans citing “privacy concerns, fear of repercussions, and general distrust of government,” you’re looking at self-inflicted wounds. The Census Bureau worked hard to earn that distrust.

Fortunately, there’s a game plan for dealing with a hostile population that refuses to answer nosy questions posed by government workers. Even before the U.S. Census Bureau alienated the public, its Dutch counterpart, Statistics Netherlands, managed to do the same. As a result, people stopped responding and the Dutch government had to find a solution.

“The last traditional census in the Netherlands, in 1971, met with many privacy objections against the collection of integral information about the population living in the Netherlands,” according to Eric Schulte Nordholt of Statistics Netherlands, writing in 2015. “This increased the non-response problem, and non-response was expected to be even higher if another traditional census were to be held in the Netherlands.”

With questionnaires increasingly ignored, Statistics Netherlands stopped bugging people and switched to using publicly available data along with samples and statistical adjustments.

While head counts in the Netherlands are now less intrusive than the old census, not everything the Dutch do translates to the American context. Statistics Netherlands relies on standardized population registers that don’t exist in the United States, and would be difficult—justifiably so, I think—to impose on a mobile and distrustful population. People worried about the abuse of data collected every 10 years aren’t going to want to continuously update their whereabouts with Big Brother.

But government has plenty of information on us as it is, from its own records and from private sources. The Census Bureau is already considering “starting the 2030 Census with an ‘in-office’ enumeration of the population using existing government administrative records,” reveals a 2016 report. Between Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service, 90 percent or more “of the U.S. population could be located.”

The Census Bureau would then fill in the gaps as needed. That approach may turn out to be more accurate than a traditional census faced with growing noncompliance and deliberately misleading responses.

As for the interesting questions about finances, ethnicity, and plumbing that the Census Bureau likes to add to the authorized tally… I could point out that the government is only supposed to count us, not interrogate us. But the Census Bureau concedes that most of the information it wants exists in government records, if only it would look.

Figuring out how many Americans there are based on existing administrative records may not only be more accurate than the old-style census, it would likely be a lot cheaper.

“A register-based census costing less than 1 percent of a traditional census is not exceptional,” points out Nordholt of Statistics Netherlands. “A traditional census in the Netherlands would cost a few hundred million euros, while with this method it costs ‘only’ around 1.4 million euros.”

Elsewhere, Statistics Netherlands reveals that the total staff required for the 2011 census was 15 people.

A national head-count based on administrative records would not only be less intrusive, cheaper, and closer to constitutional intent than old-style questionnaires; it would also be safer. Census workers would never again have to go door-to-door in a world that will probably retain concerns about contagion even after the COVID-19 pandemic passes.

Was the guy at the last house coughing because he was sick or just to needle an unwelcome visitor? That won’t be a concern for bureaucrats working desks rather than pounding pavement.

So, if you’re worried at all, toss away that census form or fill it with nonsense with a clear conscience. You’re helping to push the feds to count us in a less annoying way.

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Trump pivots on COVID-19 containment strategy and goals. The president has a depressing new vision for defining a coronavirus job well done.

In a televised Sunday night news conference, Donald Trump did an about face from downplaying the number of possible COVID-19 deaths in America, now suggesting that 2.2 million people here could die. Considering the circumstances, he said, getting that number “down to 100,000” deaths would be “a very good job.”

Trump is “reframing the crisis,” tweeted CNN reporter Daniel Dale. One might also call it moving the goalposts, to cover for federal missteps and hubris in handling the virus crisis so far.

But MAGA propaganda aside, the change in Trump’s rhetoric is a welcome one. Last week, Trump was promising that most of America would be back open for business as usual by Easter Sunday. Last night, Trump announced that voluntary social distancing recommendations would stay in place for the month of April.

“Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won,” Trump said. (Full remarks here.) He added that “on Tuesday, we will be finalizing these plans and providing a summary of our findings, supporting data, and strategy to the American people.”

Stay tuned ’til then! And expect more reality-style rollout of U.S. COVID-19 policy, as Trump becomes enamored of the “ratings” that being a crisis-time president brings…

“President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020

QUICK HITS

• COVID-19 is causing a run on jigsaw puzzles.
• A spiraling number of New York City police officers have caught the coronavirus:

Today 13% of the NYPD is out sick, 4,651 officers. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said he expects 900 to have tested positive for coronavirus by tomorrow morning.

— Erin Durkin (@erinmdurkin) March 29, 2020

• In some good news, Seattle may be starting to see turnaround in its COVID-19 outbreak. Some observers are attributing this to early containment measures. Seattle was “home of the first known coronavirus case in the United States and the place where the virus claimed 37 of its first 50 victims,” notes The New York Times. Yet “deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states….Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.”

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From last week’s decision in Winkowski v. Winkowski (Minn. Ct. App.):

Appellant J. Vincent Winkowski (father) and respondent Lisa Marie Winkowski (mother) were previously married. They are the parents of A.W. born in 2009 and C.W. born in 2014. [They were divorced in 2016.] [T]he parties share joint legal custody with mother having physical care of the children subject to father’s visitation rights.

Among other things, mother went back to court in 2019 and got two orders from the judge:

{The district court … order[ed] father to “refrain from featuring the minor children or mentioning their names in any YouTube videos” and requiring father to “remove the YouTube videos of his children already posted on his channel.”} … [T]he district court explained in a single paragraph that father and his wife regularly post videos related to survival techniques and firearms on his YouTube channel, “The Family Prepper.” The district court further found that the YouTube channel has 3,500 followers and that A.W. appears prominently in at least two of the videos. There are no other findings regarding the online videos….

In her affidavit supporting her request, mother states that the videos in question were posted without her knowledge or consent, that A.W.’s full name is visible or audible at least once, and that these videos portray “military tactics, guns, how to effectively kill or harm a human, and prepping content.” Mother argued that father should not post such controversial videos of A.W. online without mother’s consent. Mother provided the court with a video in which an eight-year-old A.W. states she is going to teach children how to be safe with guns and how to shoot them. She demonstrates how to remove the magazine of a BB gun, describes the “fundamentals of shooting,” and fires at three targets.

None of the motions filed in district court specifically requested relief related to father’s use or storage of firearms at his home during his parenting time. The district court did not make any findings regarding father’s use or storage of firearms.

The parties’ affidavits included statements regarding father’s use and storage of firearms, and more generally regarding father’s mental health. For example, mother’s opposition to father’s modification motions mentioned concerns related to father’s PTSD, his obsession with guns, and preparing for the end of the world. Mother also noted that during their marriage, father purchased military equipment, guns, assault rifles, and copious amounts of ammunition. Mother also submitted a series of photos of multiple guns left out around the house. Father attached a psychological evaluation in which the evaluator notes that prior to seeking counseling in 2007, father kept a loaded firearm under his bed, was hypervigilant, and had irrational thoughts. Mother also discussed an incident in 2012, when father accidentally discharged his gun. Bullets from the weapon penetrated the parties’ garage wall and went into the neighbor’s garage. There was no criminal prosecution.

The district court addressed father’s mental health, but did not make any factual findings specifically related to firearms. Nevertheless, the district court ordered that “[f]ather’s firearms are to be safely locked in a gun safe at all times when the minor children are with him.” …

The court of appeals remanded for more findings, because the trial court did not provide “sufficient findings to permit meaningful appellate review of these two requirements”:

District courts have broad authority to impose initial or modified limits on the time, location, frequency, duration, supervision, and other aspects of parenting time, such as requirements that a parent participate in therapy or that a parent remain sober during parenting time, based on the best interests of the children.

In this case, the district court granted mother’s motion, prohibiting father from featuring or mentioning the children in YouTube videos and requiring removal of all such videos that had already been posted on his YouTube channel. In addition, the district court imposed a requirement that father lock his firearms in a gun safe at all times when the minor children are with him. Both decisions fall within the broad discretion of the district court.

In its order, however, the district court made only one finding regarding father’s YouTube channel and did not make any findings regarding firearms. This court cannot meaningfully review the decisions of the district court regarding storage of firearms and father’s YouTube channel without more detailed findings addressing the best interests of the children. Therefore, we reverse these two decisions and remand to the district court for further proceedings. On remand, the district court may reopen the record at its discretion regarding the two conditions.

{Should the district court impose any requirements that implicate either party’s constitutional rights, additional findings are necessary. See Newstrand v. Arend, 869 N.W.2d 681, 690 (Minn. App. 2015) (holding that father’s “constitutional freedom of conscience” was not violated by an order requiring father to obtain a psychological evaluation), review denied (Minn. Dec. 15, 2015); Geske v. Marcolina, 642 N.W.2d 62, 70 (Minn. App. 2002) (rejecting First Amendment challenge to injunction against publication of pictures of a father’s children); LaChapelle v. Mitten, 607 N.W.2d 151, 163-64 (Minn. App. 2000) (best interests of the child are a compelling state interest justifying infringement on a mother’s constitutional right to travel), review denied (Minn. May 16, 2000); Sina v. Sina, 402 N.W.2d 573, 576 (Minn. App. 1987) (holding that being exposed to a third religion was not in the best interests of the children, despite father’s First Amendment freedom to exercise that religion).}

I think that restriction on parents’ constitutional rights should require more than just a “best interests of the child” showing. (Perhaps a finding that the father had accidentally shot up the house might justify a restriction on his handling guns around the children.) I’ve discussed this in some detail in this article about restrictions on parent-child speech, and I think much of that analysis should apply to restrictions on parents’ speech depicting their children. But I agree that a court imposing any such restrictions should at least expressly explain what facts it thinks make such restrictions necessary.

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