Scott Horton at the Libertarian Institute is alarmed at how fast the rise in corona-moral shaming is translating into Americans snitching to police and town authorities on local small businesses and neighbors...

"Umm, umm, ummm! I'm telling on you! I'm gonna get you in trouble!" - Nickie and Melissa, Mrs. Tuttle's kindergarten class, 1981.

Now look here, I think everyone who can possibly stay at home to try to "flatten the curve" and short-circuit this novel coronavirus, the better. But do you people really have to turn America into North Korea in the process?

Mere hyperbole perhaps? Well, take a quick look at these tales from Middle Amerika amid the nationwide coronavirus lockdown. Apparently the Associated Press notices enough of a rising trend to profile the emerging numbers of what it bluntly dubs "snitches":

Snitches are emerging as enthusiastic allies as cities, states and countries work to enforce directives meant to limit person-to-person contact amid the virus pandemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives worldwide. They're phoning police and municipal hotlines, complaining to elected officials and shaming perceived scofflaws on social media.

"In some places, investigators are patrolling the streets, looking for violators," AP notes. "In some cases, residents are turning on neighbors."

How do you encourage people to turn against each other during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The answer is not that complicated, especially if you live in the City of Bellevue, Washington.

Four years ago, when the city created the MyBellvue app, it was touted as being a quick and easy way to report things like downed street signs, potholes, street light issues and noise complaints. Fast forward to 2020 and public fears of COVID-19 have encouraged law enforcement to turn neighbors into government snitches.

Geekwire revealed how the Bellevue Police Department has turned a public service app into a report on your neighbors app. You can report these incidents through the MyBellevue app on your electronic device or the MyBellevue portal.

"Police in Bellevue, Wash., are asking residents to report violations of the state's "stay home" order online in an effort to clear up 911 lines for emergencies."

A recent Associated Press article revealed that people are all to happy to report on their neighbors.

"Snitches are emerging as enthusiastic allies as cities, states and countries work to enforce directives meant to limit person-to-person contact amid the virus pandemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives worldwide. They're phoning police and municipal hotlines, complaining to elected officials and shaming perceived scofflaws on social media."

An international poll of thousands of doctors rated the Trump-touted anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as the best treatment for the novel coronavirus.

Of the 6,227 physicians surveyed in 30 countries, 37 percent rated hydroxychloroquine as the "most effective therapy" for combating the potentially deadly illness, according to the results released Thursday.

The survey, conducted by the global health care polling company Sermo, also found that 23 percent of medical professionals had prescribed the drug in the US — far less than other countries.

"Outside the US, hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the US it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients," the survey found.

The Bureau of Federal Prisons (BOP) issued an order this week, directing all prisons to lockdown facilities and keep inmates in cells for two weeks. The order will affect 122 federal prison facilities across the country.

Bureau Director Michael Carvajal activated "Phase 5 of its COVID-19 Action Plan" on April 1. Here are the following "Phase 5" actions that BOP will conduct to "further mitigate the exposure and spread of COVID-19:"

New Yorkers were left spooked Monday night by a glaring Empire State Building light display intended to honor emergency workers fighting coronavirus.

The iconic Midtown skyscraper announced the debut of a display that began at 9 p.m. Monday, and will continue through the course of the ongoing pandemic.

"Starting tonight through the COVID-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced by the heartbeat of America with a white and red siren in the mast for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight," read a tweet from the building's official Twitter account.

Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders got quite a hostile reception on ABC's 'The View', with the hosts more interested in pressuring him to drop out than in his proposal to deal with Covid-19 by nationalizing healthcare.

Sanders should have realized the fix he was in when ABC aired the promo announcing his upcoming live appearance, literally accusing him of "politicizing this pandemic to push his agenda of Medicare for All" and implying his staying in the race could "guarantee" President Donald Trump another term.

The NHS is set to launch an opt-in contact tracking app to help stop the spread of the coronavirus at the end of the quarantine, in a first sign that the unprecedented controls could be here to stay.

The NHS is planning to launch a coronavirus contact tracking app to help slow the spread of the disease through the population. It is reportedly planned for launch just before or just after the end of the lockdown, and is being modelled on TraceTogether, a Bluetooth based-app used in Singapore to curb the country's Covid-19 spread. The idea behind this very 21st century way of keeping tabs on the health of the nation is for patients to upload their diagnostic data to the app. It will then communicate via Bluetooth with other nearby phones. If someone in the vicinity has tested positive for the disease then, after a short delay, those within an as yet to be revealed radius will be notified that they have been near someone with Covid-19.

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The U.S. President will be elected by means of a standardized physical and personally signed mail-in ballot, which, starting in the first month of the election-year, is mailed out to all registered voters, who are broken down into 100 different and all-inclusive randomly assigned daily batches of 1% of the electorate (5% of the electorate per week), and which asks each such person "Whom do you wish were America's President right now? (Name a living American.)" Each of the top two chosen named persons that is Constitutionally qualified and willing to serve as President — both of them naturally being publicly well-known — will then, within 30 days of having been publicly announced as having been selected by the voters for the second-round voting and willing to serve, post online that individual's proposed Presidential policies; and each of these two contenders will, then, after yet another 30 days, together face a town hall, with 100 randomly selected Americans, at which event ten of them who would like to ask questions will randomly be selected, each one of these ten questioners to ask only one question (secretly held by that randomly selected individual), which they want to be answered by both of the contenders, and allowing each such questioner up to 5 successive follow-up questions on that one question, to ask that question of each one of the two contenders, but allowing no other question, and no time-limits.

Economists expect 4 million to 5 million or more workers filed for unemployment claims last week, but there are still millions of claims expected, and layoffs could easily double those in the financial crisis, economists said.

There are two key employment reports Thursday and Friday. One is the government's weekly report of unemployment benefit claims, filed with states in the week ended March 28, due Thursday at 8:30 a.m. The second is March's employment report, expected before the opening bell Friday.

Economists have been ramping up their estimates for the weekly claims report. Their estimates range to as high as 9 million, but many are between 4 million to 5 million. That follows the record 3.3 million claims filed the week earlier.

Friday's monthly employment report for March is expected to show little impact from the coronavirus shutdowns and are instead penciling in job losses of as much as 10 million or more for April. Morgan Stanley expects 700,000 job losses in March, but other economists expect nonfarm payrolls at negative 100,000 and a higher unemployment rate of about 3.8%.

#Resistance heroine Alyssa Milano is being raked over the coals for backing Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden despite sexual assault allegations, and she's not the only 'feminist' making an exception from #MeToo.

Milano, one of the earliest high-profile boosters of the #MeToo hashtag, has refused to drop her support for Biden, despite former Senate aide Tara Reade going public with allegations that the former vice president sexually assaulted her while she was working on Capitol Hill over two decades ago.


Instead, the liberal actress spent Wednesday retweeting demands for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - whom she supported in 2016 - to drop out of the race, which would leave Biden, now an accused sexual predator, to run against President Donald Trump.