[slg]

You are speaking as if you have indisputable facts on your side which doesn't appear to be the case. The Federal government has broad power to respond to communicable diseases and the full extent of those powers can only really be known as new court cases are decided.

There are also steps between what we did and the type of martial law style lockdowns and quarantining done in places like China. You don't need 100% participation in lockdowns or coverage for contact tracing to get the R0 below 1 which will lead to dropping case numbers.

[jandrewrogers]

These are indisputable facts, there is a lot of case law on the limits of travel restrictions in many contexts. They can’t even use regulatory powers to implement de facto restrictions on travel by common conveyance (e.g. closing all the roads or prohibiting the sale of gasoline) — that has already been decided broadly by the Supreme Court in multiple cases.

Restrictions on freedom of travel, as laid down by the Supreme Court, are similar as for freedom of speech: the state must have a reasonable belief and compelling interest that a specific individual is an imminent threat to other people. You can’t quarantine a broad class of people over wide geographies on vague grounds, it requires clearing evidentiary hurdles that a narrowly targeted group of people harbors the disease. As a concrete example, this is the legal basis for how people remove their names from the No Fly List; having terrorist sympathies does not make one an imminent threat, and so the right to travel by common conveyance is upheld. (Unfortunately, the government has been successful at removing standing from everyone that challenges the Constitutionality of the No Fly List, but USSC justices have already made public statements that they take a very dim view of the legality of the practice.)

And this is why there were no real lockdowns. The AG in every State is well-aware that broad prohibitions on travel aren’t Constitutional and would lead to an instant court injunction. It has been tried in the past on many occasions. The most they can do is strongly disincentivize travel using their regulatory power over public establishments i.e. give people no reason to leave their house.