In April of 2020, San Clemente, CA, dumped 37 tons of sand into a skate park to keep teenagers out. Down the coast, deputies arrested a man for paddleboarding alone in the Pacific Ocean. Towns unbolted basketball rims. The mayor of Los Angeles told Angelenos that snitches get rewards, and, God help us, people snitched. Then Gavin Newsom went to dinner at The French Laundry.

All that explains two fights now burning down county commission meetings, fights that look like they have nothing to do with COVID: data centers and Flock cameras.

In March of 2020, Americans closed their businesses, closed schools, and canceled funerals because they trusted their institutions. Those institutions destroyed the trust Americans placed in them.

The virus came. The data came. The virus mutated. The data changed. The people in charge did not.

We learned early on that children were not meaningful vectors of spread. The teachers' unions kept school doors locked anyway, and a generation of students regressed. We learned the virus spread indoors, and California kept filling........

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