To Judge Jenkins:

While your stay-at-home order is in line with Governor Abbott’s April 30th deadline, I don’t want Dallas County to extend it further. We have to go back to work May 1st.

Keeping everybody home hurts the Dallas Economy and therefore hurts people.

Human suffering from joblessness is as real as getting the flu - people die from both.

Universal quarantine is incredibly costly, not just dollars and sense costly, but also costly  to human life.

A national or even global economic collapse will take the lives of millions of people worldwide from deaths of despair, such as, 
    depression, 
    opioid overdose, 
    loss of identity and purpose, and
    loss of human dignity and comfort. 

In fact, calls to suicide hotlines, as well as, calls to addiction and domestic abuse hotlines have spiked dramatically.

We were created to work; we were given that assignment from God, starting in the Garden of Eden. You really have no right to take that away.

Remember that the worldwide rise of GDP has pulled millions of people out of poverty and raised their life expectancy. Up-ending that would plunge people right back into abject poverty, misery, and shorter life expectancy. On both sides of the aisle.

Declaring some jobs as non-essential is complete nonsense. All jobs are essential, otherwise, they wouldn’t exist. Everybody plays a small part in the national and global economies and everybody plays the entire part in his own economy. Mass unemployment is not the answer! 

I suggest you target and isolate the hotspots and the vulnerable people, bombarding them with medical solutions, and let the rest of us go back to work. We can take personal responsibility for our own hand washing and social distancing.

Testimony on April 7, 2020 to Commissioner's Court - Elizabeth Biesel

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