Knock, Knock. We’re from the Government, and We Want Your Family’s Blood
Sunday May 3, 2020
Talk about creepy. The Georgia Department of Public Health has announced that it, the United Sates Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and county health boards are together sending teams of government agents to randomly selected homes in two Georgia counties. These teams of government agents are charged with asking questions, including about household members’ health, and extracting blood from all the people living in the homes. The reason given for the home visits is — you may have guessed it — coronavirus.
J. Scott Trubey writes at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the government agencies are seeking the blood to test for “antibodies to the novel coronavirus to pinpoint who might have had COVID-19 and estimate how widely the virus has traveled.”
People who live at the 420 randomly selected homes are free, Trubey writes, to refuse the questioning and blood drawing by the government inquisition and phlebotomy teams that show up at their front doors. But, in reality, people often find it hard to muster the courage to say “no” to government agents who accost them in person “asking” them to comply. People are intimidated. They think that even if they say “no” the requested action will still be taken anyway plus they will suffer additional consequences for resisting. That aids police efforts both to get people to say incriminating things and to obtain “permission” to search people and property, even from people who know evidence of a crime is likely to be found.
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