SHUT COURTS DOWN 2.0

It is now too dangerous for clerks, lawyers, JAs, corrections officers, bailiffs, and Judges to leave their homes and go to court. It is time to shut it down again. We realize two things: First, a courtroom needs to be open in criminal court, juvenile court, and domestic court to handle bond hearings in state court  and first appearances in Federal Court. Second, what we are advocating is easier blogged than done. 
The challenges facing Chief Judges Moore, Soto, Sayfie, Bailey, et. al, are staggering. But every contact inside a courthouse is a dangerous contact. Support staff have gotten ill. We have received reports of certain staff in certain courthouses congregating without masks, inside. No good can come of this. It is time to shut all but the very basic court operations until the positive test rate in Miami-Dade gets below 5 percent.
JULY 20 1969 
On this date in 1969 we landed on the Moon. Humans reached to the stars that humanity has stared at with awe and wonder since people  first walked the earth. We traveled to another celestial body and landed on it and returned. 
We have often pondered if that would be the people of earth's high water mark. Would this be our shinning accomplishment? The best we would ever do? 

The landing was fraught with drama. 1201 and 1202 alarms that were not immediately recognized or handled in simulations occurred as the Eagle plunged towards the lunar surface. The landing computer was bringing the Eagle into a field of boulders.  But the best pilot in the solar system was in command. Neil Armstrong had trained for this moment his whole life. The stress of the situation was not going to affect him. He rose to the occasion and took over from the computer and piloted the Eagle to safety. Humanity rose to the occasion and Armstrong, NASA and the USA showed the world what we could do when we put our mind to something. 

It is no accident a country that celebrates individualism could invent the technology that made Apollo 11 possible. 

It is no accident that the United States produced a Neil Armstrong. 

It is no accident that NASA had produced men like Gene Kranz Jack Garman, and Steve Bales,  who saved the landing when the unexpected `1201and 1202 alarms occurred. Kranz as flight director had final authority to order Armstrong to abort the landing. Weeks before the landing Kranz ordered his specialists to review every possible alarm. Twenty-four year old flight specialist Jack Garman made a handwritten list of all alarms and causes. Bales was the guidance officer. When the alarm occurred Kranz wanted Bales to give him a go/abort on the alarm. Garman quickly pieced together that the alarm was a computer memory overload and was not fatal to the mission. He told Bales they were a go and Bales trusted Garman. Bales told Kranz they were a go and Kranz trusted Bales. Kranz told Armstrong and Aldrin they were a go on the alarm and the two men trusted their team in NASA and they went on to land the Eagle on the Moon. 

This country produced Armstrong and Aldrin and Kranz and Bales and Garman and ten thousand other men and women who made the lunar landings possible. 

At this very moment ten thousand or more Americans are working to save humanity. They are studying a virus and discovering treatments and developing a vaccine. 

We can only hope that we did not hit our high water mark fifty-one years ago today. That someday in the near future we will celebrate  new names-unspoken today- who will be the team of men and women that defeat this virus and scourge. We have done it before. And we are not done yet and we will not be defeated. 


PS Wear your mask. It works. Study after study shows that all it takes is a mask to stop people from spreading the virus.  In a recent study two people who cut hair in Missouri became infected. While they were asymptomatic they wore masks as did there customers- over 130 people who came into close contact with an infected person wearing a mask. Contact tracing showed that NO ONE became infected. Here is the CDC study.  MASKS WORK.