This piece is the first in a series of five articles I will be publishing over the next couple of weeks looking at various aspects of our new Covidian State in 2020. These pieces are also due to be published on The Conservative Woman website from 27-31 December.

"Our Government, along with Governments around the world will shortly announce the quarantining of whole populations for a seasonal respiratory virus which leaves 99.8-99.9% of those who get it in the land of the living. What is more, they will also announce a shutdown of the entire economy for months and then, when the epidemic has actually gone, will mandate that you cover the lower half of your face with a bit of cloth. They will do this by frightening people into compliance with a barrage of propaganda, slogans, data entirely taken out of context, and the threat of massive fines."

Anyone making this claim at the beginning of the year would rightly have been thought to have mislaid the plot and their marbles, long ago. But here we are, at the end of that same year, and it is precisely what has happened.

Only it is much worse than that.

Had you somehow been persuaded to give credence to this insane prophecy, you would probably have been comforted by the following thought: "They'll never get away with it. The people will never stand for it."

Not a bit of it. Somehow, millions of people across the country, and in fact across the world, were persuaded to accept it. By far the majority somehow thought that quarantining whole nations of healthy people for a virus, for the first time in history, was a good idea. Well, actually the second time in history to be precise. It was tried in 2009 by the Mexican Government during the Swine Flu outbreak, but they had the good sense to end it after a couple of weeks after realising how much it would devastate the country.

An analysis of ballot transfer forms from Cobb County reveals that 78 percent of the more than 89,000 absentee ballots from drop box locations, required to be "immediately transported" to the county registrar according to Emergency Rule of the State Election Board for Absentee Voting, took more than one hour to be transferred to election officials.

State Election Board Emergency Rule 183-1-14-0.8-.14 relative to securing absentee ballot drop boxes was adopted by the State Election Board at the July 1, 2020, meeting.

In addition to other prescriptive requirements for securing the absentee ballot drop boxes, which were placed at 16 locations throughout Cobb County, the rule also addresses the collection and transport of the ballots from each drop box location to the custody of the registrar.

After a November report by New South Wales Supreme Court Judge and Army Reserve Major General Paul Brereton, that found "credible information" about Australian soldiers being involved in the alleged killing of civilians and prisoners in Afghanistan, the army fired 13 servicemen in connection with the four-year probe.

An Australian senior Special Forces soldier pictured drinking beer out of a killed Taliban fighter's prosthetic leg in a bar in Afghanistan is reported to have recently lectured troops on army ethics and integrity, writes the Daily Mail.

A 50-year-old veteran of overseas deployments, Warrant Officer Class 1 John Letch, Command Sergeant Major of the Special Operations Command, voluntarily retired after a pixelated copy of the controversial photograph, believed to be showing a scene from an unofficial pub set up inside Australia's special forces base in Tarin Kowt in 2009, was leaked at the start of the month.

Orange County, Calif., Sheriff Don Barnes pushed back against an "absurd" order from a local Superior Court judge ordering the release of 1,800 inmates, including some who are locked up for murder and child molestation, due to the coronavirus.

"I have no intention of doing that, of releasing those individuals back into the community. I think they pose a serious threat," Barnes told "Fox & Friends."

The decision by the court was made in response to an April lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in an effort to protect disabled and medically vulnerable people at the Orange County Jail, reports said, but Barnes plans to appeal.

The Grand County coroner is calling attention to the way the state health department is classifying some deaths. The coroner, Brenda Bock, says two of their five deaths related to COVID-19 were people who died of gunshot wounds.

Bock says because they tested positive for COVID-19 within the past 30 days, they were classified as "deaths among cases."

"It's absurd that they would even put that on there," she said. "Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers? Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious. You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don't have it, and we don't need those numbers inflated."

The federal ban on evictions expires in January. For millions that's when huge problems start.

Prepare for a Wave of Evictions in January as Federal Ban Expires.

Millions of U.S. renters face the prospect of eviction in January unless federal officials extend protections put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic.

That month is when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ban on evictions is set to expire. The moratorium protects tenants who have missed monthly rent payments from being thrown out of their homes if they declare financial hardship. The CDC ordered the halt on evictions under the Public Health Service Act, which allows the federal government to enact regulations that help stop the spread of infectious diseases.

Between 2.4 million and 5 million American households are at risk of eviction in January alone, and millions more will be vulnerable in the months after, according to estimates from the investment bank and financial-advisory firm Stout Risius Ross.

Landlords have already filed more than 150,000 eviction petitions during the pandemic in the 27 cities tracked by Princeton University's Eviction Lab. Many of those tenants have lost their cases, and are now on the hook for all their back rent.

The Arizona state Senate on Monday announced two subpoenas in the state's most populous county to audit scanned ballots, voting machines, and software.

Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann announced that state Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, a Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, served the subpoenas under her direction to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

"One subpoena calls for a scanned ballot audit, to collect an electronic ballot image cast for all mail-in ballots counted in the November 2020 general election in Maricopa County, Arizona. The second subpoena calls for a full forensic audit of ballot tabulation equipment, the software for that equipment and the election management system used in the 2020 general election," Fann, a Republican, announced in a statement.

She added that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors were served the subpoenas on Tuesday afternoon. The subpoenas request that the information be delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman on or before 5 p.m. on Dec. 18, 2020.

"I appreciate Board Chairman Clint Hickman's commitment to the integrity of the Arizona election process, and I know he shares all of our concerns," Fann added.

Millions of people have moved out of New York City during the pandemic, but at the same time, millions of others with lower incomes have taken their place, according to a study released on Tuesday.

All told, a net 70,000 people left the metropolitan region this year, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income, according to estimates from Unacast here, a location analytics company.

About 3.57 million people left New York City this year between Jan. 1 and Dec. 7, according to Unacast, which analyzed anonymized cell phone location data. Some 3.5 million people earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that same period, the report showed.

"The exodus isn't as big as people have been talking about," said Thomas Walle, chief executive and co-founder of Unacast. "Maybe the greater impact is how the population is changing and how the demographics are changing."

Concerned about possible election evidence being destroyed, members of a joint session of the Michigan Legislature's House and Senate oversight committees on Tuesday voted to issue subpoenas to Detroit and the nearby suburb of Livonia demanding they surrender hard drives, emails, absentee voter counting board laptops and other election-related materials. One Senate Democrat reportedly joined his Republican colleagues in supporting the subpoenas.

A Nov. 28 order memo from the State Bureau of Elections had followed the same protocol as prior elections and ordered the deletion by November 30 of

"E-Pollbook laptops and flash drives ... unless a petition for recount has been filed and the recount has not been completed, a post-election audit is planned but has not yet been completed, or the deletion of the data has been stayed by an order of the court or the Secretary of State."

A popular California tourist destination is saying thanks, but no thanks to the state's recent stay-at-home order as coronavirus cases continue to surge. The almost 6,000-person city defied Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's orders, which took effect on Tuesday and extend through Jan. 4.

The restrictions mandate that in-person dining cease... as well as bars, museums, family entertainment centers, and personal care services also close up shop.

Last week, Solvang's one-term Mayor Ryan Toussaint filed an emergency motion in a city council meeting that the town would not follow the lockdown order. The motion passed unanimously 5-0. In a December 7 letter to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, Touissant previously wrote that business owners and residents had expressed "significant concerns" about shutdowns to the council.

"The community of Solvang has done a great job at being mindful, safe and responsible while keeping our local economy going during these challenging times. The current order by the State is ill-conceived, unnecessary and quite frankly negligent when it comes to protecting our community in a safe, balanced and sane manner."

Two days later, Touissant penned a letter to the city calling Newsom's actions "nothing short of disastrous."