March 26, 2023
In Case You Forgot What Government Did to Us for COVID...
By
Jamaica Plain
Santa Clara County (SCC) residents earn the title for longest duration living under the strictest COVID rules in the nation. SCC's public health department (SCC DPH) director, Sara Cody, became the
face of lockdown — the spokesperson to declare the nation's first Shelter-in-Place (SIP) order on March 16, 2020. SCC was first in the nation to enter lockdown,
lowest for in-person schooling, highest in restrictions,
highest in punitive fines, and last to ditch school mask mandates. While frequently lauded by her proponents for touting "safety first," she
knew that "the efficacy of face masks and physical distancing hadn't been established yet." Instead, Cody used intrusive surveillance to "proactively" find and fine violators, followed by legal action to compel compliance.
When Calvary Chapel in San Jose's Pastor Mike McClure declared church "essential" in May 2020, he made himself a
beacon for God's people seeking community and a target for SCC's compliance unit. He made headlines for accruing
$2.8M in fines for "obeying God over men" (Acts 5:29) while protecting religious freedom and providing hope to congregants suffering isolation and anxiety. In response to churches' 1st Amendment lawsuit, SCC countersued Calvary Chapel and other churches for violating public health orders. While other churches settled with the county after accruing daily fines, Calvary requested
legal dismissal. County lawyer WIlliams retaliated by
pressuring Calvary's bank to issue a loan default based on the county's $2.8M fines. McClure sued Williams for unlawful retaliation, and their case is ongoing.
As a result of the back-and-forth lawsuits, we recently learned
SCCs coercion and surveillance techniques. Starting August 2020, SCC deployed its
50-employee compliance team for stakeout at the adjacent church to log daily descriptions of unmasked attendants hugging unmasked congregants without proper distancing. Starting November 2020, officers were permitted by a judge to observe indoor weekly private Bible studies, youth events, and "Manna for Mamas," where they observed personal events to tally mask status of attendees, any distancing violations, and singing. Over a six-week period starting November 2020, compliance officers recorded 51 hours of on-site surveillance, for which each officer was paid $219 per hour.
SCC also monitored cellular mobility data combined with a
virtual geographic boundary around Calvary Chapel to electronically count daily church visits. Although the SCC Board of Supervisors purchased SafeGraph data in early 2020 to evaluate general SIP compliance, SCC used Point-of-Interest (POI) precision to count daily visits to individual buildings on Calvary's property. The extrapolation of SafeGraph mobile phone visits to actual visits used a statistical model by Stanford Law School's Daniel Ho that cost taxpayers $800 per hour. His numbers matched those collected by the in-person surveillance team.