California Bans Singing In Church

Throughout the past week, Gov Newsom has issued a series of orders rolling back California's reopening due to what corporate media calls a "resurgence" in COVID, although the key figure used to justify lockdowns in March continues to decline, as depicted in the graph I found on this site (click on the image for a larger copy):

However, corporate media has shifted the narrative from deaths and hospitalizations to "cases", which means positive tests. Dr Fauci, who was forced repeatedly to reduce his estimates of COVID deaths in March, now predicts there could be 100,000 new "cases" per day unless, you guessed it, we do lots of stuff to "bend the curve".

It's oddly difficult to find stories that have any level of detail on how many people tested for COVID have no symptoms, but the most current ones I can find from the past week, like this one, give numbers in the 75-80% range. But despite the increasing number of "cases", according to the CDC, for the week ending June 27,

Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.0% during week 25 to 5.9% during week 26, representing the tenth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC. The percentage is currently at the epidemic threshold but will likely change as more death certificates are processed, particularly for recent weeks. Nobody has called for the hospital ships, which were hardly used at all, to come back to New York or LA.

In other words, even by the CDC's account, despite skyrocketing numbers of positive tests, the COVID death rate has continued to decline. It seems to me that this indicates, if anything, that we're moving toward herd immunity without a vaccine. Yet even red state governors are being stampeded into reversing reopenings.

That California Gov Newsom would see this manufactured "spike" as an excuse to reimpose controls specifically meant for "houses of worship" is an iffy situation. According to the Sacramento Bee,

Unlike the restaurant closures, Newsom said little about the new guidelines on houses of worship, mentioning them only in passing during a press conference Thursday.

It remains to be seen if, or how, the state or counties are expected to enforce the ban on singing in houses of worship. Churches were among the most aggressive institutions in pushing back on Newsom’s original stay-at-home order in mid-March. Several sued the governor to overturn the order, saying it violated their First Amendment rights, although none were successful in court.

This misstates the case. In both California and Illinois, the states withdrew their specific restrictions on "houses of worship" when the plaintiffs sought injunctions from the US Supreme Court. A repeat of this process could bring the same result, or a different case could in fact result in an injunction.

The problem for an authoritarian corporate state is that religious organizations represent a social network outside of state control. The accounts I've read from Nazi Germany indicate that, although you'd be deported to camps if you were a Red or a Jew, Catholics were a group subject to a second tier of suspicion, and Catholics had routine visits from the Gestapo. Accounts from military officers indicate that being an active Catholic could be a serious threat to one's career and position.

What we see is that, although the corporate state has been forced temporarily to tolerate limited physical gatherings of the faithful under heavily circumscribed conditions, it is using public health justifications to chip away at even these.

A possible remedy will be a more broadly based strategy derived from a natural rights approach. A recent Illinois case shows promise:

A southern Illinois judge on Thursday voided Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Coronavirus lockdown orders.

The Illinois Attorney General’s office is expected to appeal.

Pritzker first declared a statewide disaster because of Coronavirus back in early March and continued to issue 30 day extensions — he has used the disaster proclamations in his restrictions in each ‘reopening phase’ dubbed “Restore Illinois.”

. . . Judge Michael McHaney on Thursday said state law does not give governors the authority to extend disaster proclamations past 30 days or activities and businesses via executive order.

The precise legal justification for variations on lockdown orders varies from state to state. Versions of this case are moving through courts in at least Michigan and Pennsylvania. The precise legal questions will inge on the state's authority to limit constitutional (or natural) rights on various pretexts.

Again, natural law and natural rights are a key basis for Catholic moral philosophy. This approach was key to Pope St John Paul in overthrowing Stalinism. Catholics can play an important role here as well.