US President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on March 26, 2020, in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)
The United States government is creating a climate of fear in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, according to Michael Springmann, a Washington-based author and former US diplomat.
Those intentionally spreading coronavirus in the United States will be charged as terrorists, the Justice Departments No. 2 official has said.
Jeffrey Rosen made the comment as the fast growing pandemic was spreading throughout the country, prompting fears of an economic recession.
"Because coronavirus appears to meet the statutory definition of a ‘biological agent... such acts potentially could implicate the Nations terrorism-related statutes," Rosen said. "Threats or attempts to use covid-19 as a weapon against Americans will not be tolerated."
According to a data analysis done by University of Washington School of Medicine, the coronavirus pandemic could kill more than 81,000 people in the United States in the next four months.
Springmann said that "its a stretch to call in a biological agent unless they are admitting that this was created in a bio warfare lab. But I think what theyre trying to say is: Well, Jesus has terrible side effects just like biological agents that are created in the lab do. So therefore, we have to guard against this."
"And one way of doing it is to go after people who supposedly deliberately spread this but then the Justice Department has also been suggesting in the recent weeks or so that they want judges to put people in jail without arrest warrants and without any probable cause, because they think they might be dangerous. So the Justice Department here in the United States is getting seriously engaged in depriving people of their civil rights," he said.
"Ive seen articles in the Washington Post from towns around the United States just this morning, that said that many local state government and police departments are doing the same thing that the Justice Department only wants to do," he noted.
"There was someone arrested in a Wegmans supermarket because he coughed on a person standing in the store, because they the person being coughed on was claiming ‘youre standing too close to me, you have to be six feet away. And then there was another case where a guy licked an underarm deodorant display in a grocery store. And he was arrested for spreading the coronavirus because he bragged on the internet that he had the coronavirus he was going to spread it himself," he added.
"So what basically whats this, this virus business and the American government reaction to it at all levels, is basically creating a climate of fear in which anything is possible and anything is justified," the analyst observed.
SOURCE: PRESS TV
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/15060
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