Laundry list of things we are seeing (and have just accepted)

A virus declared to have unprecedented transmissibility and lethality, even though the data to confirm this is either untrustworthy (China) or simply not fully fleshed out. It is clearly potent, but not exactly World War Z.

In the name of this virus, we have seen:

1. International travel bans (usually bilateral)
2. Domestic shutdowns in largest population centers
3. Curfews
4. Municipalities and counties declaring emergency powers to restrict liquor sales, gun sales, gas stations, and various other commerce.
5. Bans on gatherings of more than 10 people
6. Businesses being implicitly closed down by these bans, with some of them literally boarding up the windows.
7. DOJ asking for indefinite detention
8. Increasing/escalating declarations that crimes will not be prosecuted
9. Existing prisoners being freed
10. Calls to restrict internet bandwidth
11. FMLA and paid sick leave legislation (with no sunset) that would have been non-starters a month ago.
12. Relief legislation that has 12 zeros in the number, with mind-bogglingly blunt impact (i.e., "helicopter money")
13. Broad swaths of the economy summarily shut down to a point where a roaring economy could contract by 10% or more in a matter of weeks.


Things I can imagine or extrapolate from the above:

1. Currency controls
2. Stock market closings (without the triggers we have already seen)
3. City and/or state quarantines
4. Mandatory vaccinations
5. Continued hoarding and lack of supply of certain commodities
6. Outright gun bans, either on sales or even up to confiscation

Call me a conspiracy theorist all you want, but this is all accumulating faster than I would have ever imagined, and it seems like we have accepted it all as necessary or inevitable.

This is party-agnostic. As I think more about it, I am shocked Mitch let the legislation get past the Senate.

It seems like we have become blind or numb to the steps being taken, all in the name of a bad (but not "plague-like") contagion.