Over the weekend, the panic over the novel coronavirus has continued to ramp up.

Among the current trends: more governors are starting to close the borders of their states. Here is a list of those claimed to be doing so:

• California – rumor? The San Francisco Chronicle claims it cannot, but…
• Texas has required that people entering Texas from certain states must be in quarantine
• Florida has also required that people entering Florida from a small but growing list of states must be in quarantine or return to their point of origin
• Alaska is prohibiting travel from the Lower 48
• Hawaii is prohibiting travel from the other 49
• Rhode Island is conducting house-to-house searches to find and deport New Yorkers, is pulling over vehicles with NY plates (and apparently turning them back), and has National Guard troops manning checkpoints at railroad stations. Bloomberg calls it “hunting down” New Yorkers.
• Maryland is requiring quarantine of all people arriving from New York
• South Carolina is quarantining all arrivals from New York
• Parts of New York itself (eastern Long Island) seem to want to barricade themselves from New York City
• The Navajo Nation (as I discussed recently) has prohibited all outside “non-essential” traffic
• Now both the Oglala Lakota Nation and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, in South Dakota, have also banned travel into and through their lands, except for residents returning home. The Rosebud declaration includes all of the old reservation in five counties, not just the current (one-county) reservation.
• Various Pueblos in New Mexico have banned travel into their lands, at least travel not on state highways.

Nearly HALF of all confirmed infections in the Fifty States are in New York State, and more than a QUARTER are in New York City alone. There have already been suggestions (most at least partly joking) that New York City itself, or at least Manhattan and Staten Island (Richmond) be walled off. Much of this seems to be the result of the Governor, Mayor, and senior health officials encouraging participation in Chinese New Year events several weeks ago, pooh poohing the risk of Beer Flu.

This triggers a number of thoughts.

• None of these actions are being taken by the respective legislatures of the States, as far as I can tell. Rather, they are the actions of governors as dictators or tyrants – for the good of the people, of course. {sarcasm alert, folks}
• A friend suggests that those states which are closing their borders have defacto seceded from the Union, and that Congress and the White House ought to let them go – and stop all government subsidies and payments to that state and its local governments.
• The Vox article suggests – even argues – that these actions are destroying the American Union, and that after the coronavirus scare will come more and more reasons – citing the fracturing of the EU and reestablishing national border controls there.
• The growing political fractures in the Fifty States visible and expanded by the 2020 election, coupled with the serious economic blows from the Beer Flu Panic add to the medical fears and fears of death.
• Federalizing National Guard units (currently in three states), letting the FedGov foot the bill while the states (theoretically) continue to command the troops sets a dangerous precedent for future conflicts within the Fifty States, as well as for future disasters.
• Based on the present (and growing) hysteria over the still-few serious illnesses and deaths (at least outside New York City, New York, and New Orleans), more irrational actions can be expected from politicians, business managers, and individuals across the nation. Including intentional and unintentional efforts to “fort up.” Indeed, military units are already doing that, as Cheyenne Mountain returns to full capacity and “Condition Omega” plans are activated. [Though I honestly do not know why Cheyenne Mountain is “infamous” according to the Daily Mail headline.] Scared, nervous, panicked people tend to make serious mistakes.
• As the woos of internet communications showed last weekend, communications is getting more dicey. While the hackers continue to ply their nasty trade, overuse of the lines of communication is causing more and more failures. Not just internet but cellular coverage and even landlines are showing the strain. And it will get worse: Colorado Governor Polis’ decree, for example, states that work on power and communications lines and poles and the like are NOT “essential” and were stopped this week.

When we add all this up, we must at least be prepared for the actual, at least de facto sundering of the Fifty States. And if it is happening here, the situation in China, in India, and in Europe, is far worse. Even in Australia, the various States have closed their borders TO EACH OTHER – which makes me wonder if Canberra is really in control of anything.

I am unsure of just what Canada is doing – except for the usual bashing of the USA and Trump – all the Provinces and Territories have emegencies and many do seem to be blaming Trudeau for poor performance (if not as much as they are blaming Trump). But given the already fragile state of the Canadian federation, this just ups the ante.

But to answer the basic headline question, we are not seeing the end of the United States of America as a mostly unified nation-state. Even though we may be seeing the end of much more liberty than we could have conceived of three months ago.