David Zweig:

This is a summary of one of the many complaints—some of which were bizarrely detailed like this—that were submitted to the Santa Clara County, California, complaint department, where citizens were encouraged to rat our their fellow county residents for violating health orders. I gained access to a government spreadsheet of some of the complaints [which I’ve included at the bottom of this post] while reviewing legal documents for my article about the lawsuit of Santa Clara vs Calvary Chapel for Covid violations. 

Reading the complaints gives a window into the psyche of our fellow Americans during the pandemic, and introduces serious questions about the healthy functioning of a society that encourages neighbors to snitch on neighbors for minor offenses.

In late November, a household was tattled on for regularly holding social gatherings, and doing so without people wearing face coverings or social distancing. At one of the gatherings kids from different families were running around together. To make matters worse, the complainant said that “contractors working at the premises do not wear face coverings” . . .and they were “chatting and laughing.”

The following day, a complaint came in about a neighbor who has a “swing band” that gets together every Saturday to practice. They don’t wear masks or distance, and they were “playing loud wind instruments.”

What’s so amusing, and perhaps unsettling about many of the complaints is their odd degree of specificity. A swing band? Really?