Loading ...The Right To Be Let Alone: What To Do When COVID Strike Force Teams Come Knocking
“Here’s the bottom line.
These agents are coming to your home with one purpose in mind: to collect information on you.
It’s a form of intimidation, of course. You shouldn’t answer any questions you’re uncomfortable answering about your vaccine history or anything else. The more information you give them, the more it can be used against you. Just ask them politely but firmly to leave.
In this case, as in so many interactions with government agents, the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments (and your cell phone recording the encounter) are your best protection.
Under the First Amendment, you don’t have to speak (to government officials or anyone else). The Fourth Amendment protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. And under the Fifth Amendment, you have a right to remain silent and not say anything which might be used against you.
You can also post a “No Trespassing” sign on your property to firmly announce that you are exercising your right to be left alone. If you see government officials wandering around your property and peering through windows, in my opinion, you have a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Government officials can ring the doorbell, but once you put them on notice that it’s time for them to leave, they can’t stay on your property.
It’s important to be as clear as possible and inform them that you will call the police if they don’t leave. You may also wish to record your encounter with the government agent. If they still don’t leave, immediately call the local police and report a trespasser on your property.
Remember, you have rights.
The government didn’t want us to know about—let alone assert—those rights during this whole COVID-19 business.”
When the I hear knocking at my front door I look out the front window and if it looks like it’s someone selling something I just ignore it. This has worked for last 25 years. One of my neighbours had a “novel” idea. A few months ago he taped a handwritten sign to his front door that said “Coronavirus patients inside”. It was there for months. I don’t think he was sick, he just didn’t want visitors.
How about open the door shaking uncontrollably and spitting saliva everywhere when you tell them ..yes you were vaccinated last week and glad you were…they say the tremors will be gone in a year or two
Is the Biden Admin thinking this through? They would only get Dems to do the dirty work. They would not be welcome at most doors. Going to be some interesting confrontations.
I don’t get many at the door but when they do knock on the door they face a snarling, lunging creature from Hell.
He’s 29lbs, has a loud deep bark and I have to hold him back when I open the door.
Had a 100lb black lab cross years ago who would let anyone in as his tail wagged profusely. He’d be sad to see you go.
I guess just to f..k up their stats and record keeping, just tell them all xx of you are fully Jabbed and too busy to talk. Slam! No follow-up required.
Food for thought: From The Arrow #28
Tools for Critical Thinking
I just finished a good book called The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t. As I’m sure you know, I’m a sucker for books on critical thinking, so I jumped on this one when I discovered it.
The Scout Mindset
The problem with a lot of books on critical thinking is that despite talking about how important critical thinking is, not many of them give you the tools to do it. If you want to think critically about something, how do you go about it? Do you just sit and think until you become enlightened? Or are there tools and techniques that help you?
This book is one of the few I’ve read that does provide a means to run your thinking through the wash, so to speak, to clean it up. Julia Galef, the author, is the host of a podcast on rational thinking, and she has come up with a number of methods to see if your ideas hold up to scrutiny.
I’m not totally aboard on her soldier versus scout metaphor. She makes the case fairly well that we all–me, included (maybe me most of all)–indulge in what she calls motivated reasoning. That means reasoning motivated by, say, one’s identification with a group. If you’re a staunch Republican and are presented with a piece of news you need to sort out, your motivated reasoning will drive you to come up with a solution that jibes with your political principles. Same if you’re a Democrat. You’re motivated to reason it out to stay in accord with your beliefs, instead of seeking the truth.
And it’s not just politics. It can be a problem that falls into the realm of science. A classic one is the calories in/calories out group versus the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity crowd. Whatever study comes out, both sides try to make the data fit their belief system.
The author calls this the soldier mindset. Soldiers defend, they don’t really think about the implications. Scouts, on the other hand, have to discover the lay of the land. They’re responsible for reporting the situation as it is, not how they wish it to be.
As I say, it’s kind of a corny metaphor, but useful I suppose.
One of the handful of tools she suggests people use to run ideas through is what she calls The Double Standard Test. In terms of politics, you would evaluate an idea based on how you would feel about it if the opposing party came up with it. Or how you would feel about a policy you hated if your own side came up with it.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example from an alternate universe.
One talent everyone can agree Donald Trump has is being divisive. I don’t think anyone on either side would question that. So let’s do a thought experiment. I mentioned this a few weeks ago in The Arrow, but someone I read somewhere over the past few days (sorry, I can’t recall where) fleshed it out.
As we know, Trump’s team drove the push to get the vaccine. The vaccines were not given until after Trump lost the election, though. Vaccinations were started after Trump lost, but before he left office. President Biden and the Democrats have basically taken over the whole vaccination push. So, this thought experiment is for Democrats of necessity because they won.
Now let’s say in our alternate universe, Trump wins the election. He goes on being Trump, crowing about how he hammered first Crooked Hillary and now Sleepy Joe, how he invented the vaccines, which are the best vaccines ever made in the history of vaccines, and all the rest of the Trumpery we watched for four years. On top of all this, he fires Fauci (which I think he was on the verge of doing anyway). If this alternate universe was reality, what do you, as a Democrat, think the mainstream media would be doing today?
If I had to guess, they would not be encouraging everyone to get the vaccine. I think they would be focusing on every adverse outcome irrespective of how minor it was. Every newscast would have someone whose kid was in the hospital with a severe reaction. Big Tech would be censoring anyone with any credentials who came out publicly–especially if on Fox–and said the vaccines are perfectly safe. Everyone needs to take them. All these side effects you’re hearing about are one in a million. Ignore them. Get the vaccine. Give it to your kids. You would never hear these things like you’re hearing them today. Every time Trump would talk to the press on his way to the helicopter, he would be barraged with questions about adverse reactions to the vaccine. You know this is what would happen in that alternate universe.
So, the critical thinking tool is to run it through this thought process. If you really believe my scenario ahove would happen had Trump been re-elected, then you need to rethink what you really think about the vaccine.
That’s what a critical thinking tool does for you. Forces you to think without the way you identify getting involved.
Grab this book. It’s great.