A grocery store threw out $35,000 in food that a woman intentionally coughed on, sparking coronaviru

What are really the odds of someone contracting Covid-19 from eating some food which was earlier sneezed on by an infected person? And then having a serious enough illness from it to be injured?

People have lost all sense of proportion. Certainly it should be a crime to do so, but is that really terrorism? Or clear and present danger of serious bodily injury or death?
 
kyleb said:
I think it is a great idea to make a very public example of someone like this. No, she won't go into the pokey for 20 years for terrorism - in a few months, a prosecutor or the DA will lessen the charges. However, the immediate publicity will dissuade the next person from doing it, and she'll learn an important lesson in how expensive and life changing it can be to intentionally destroy $35k of someone else's stuff.
Well, the trouble with arbitrary prosecutions is you never know which group or who will be next.

Perhaps some violation of an FAA reg will be regarded as over the top in the next panic frenzy.

Certainly the perpetrator should have to pay for the $35k of damage, no question.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Would you eat the food?
No of course not and if I owned the store I would throw it out and expect the person who did that to pay for it.

But that act is not terrorism in any reasonable definition of the term or an act which justified immediate use of lethal force to defend yourself.
 
kyleb said:
When you intentionally damage $35k of stuff, it isn't an arbitrary prosecution. Ain't like they said "eenie, meenie, miney, moe" and picked a random person queuing up in the checkout line.
What is arbitrary is trying to use over the top prosecutions for crimes which bear no reasonable relationship to the actual actions.

It is the tendency of prosecutors to use such charges in a selective manner that is so dangerous, and “make an example of” one individual when the normal punishment meted out for the behavior is much less.

In this case, for example, to call such wanton destruction of property “terrorism”. That term originally meant the use of violence against innocent civilians en masse to incite fear in a population for political purposes.

What is the political purpose in this case? Is this the use of violence against a population?
 
And apparently the woman was having mental health issues, so it seems very unlikely she was engaged in violent acts to make a political point.

The Federal prosecutors want to consider Covid-19 as a biological weapon. Then what about the seasonal flu, is that a biological weapon as well...
 
benyflyguy said:
This wasn’t even a stunt.
No, it was apparently the action of someone with mental health issues. In that sense, such a person is not likely to even modify their behavior much in response to the charges.
 
kyleb said:
If I'd done something stupid like that, I'd have claimed mental problems too. I don't see what she did as political. I see it as an extension of the youtube/reality TV culture where people are almost encouraged to do absolutely stupid things. Thing is, do the stupid things to YOUR stuff, not someone else's stuff.
Definitely stupid and if she did not have pre-existing mental health issues, should definitely be punished. In any case, mental health issues or not, should be responsible for the property damage.

But agreed not terrorism and that was my original point about people not having a sense of proportion in trying to charge things like this as terrorism.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
What if she sneezed into a spray bottle filled with water and started spraying people with the contents?
Getting even crazier. I think it is a biological weapon only if the contents were processed somehow to increase the concentration of the virus and she actually had the illness. :emoji846:
 
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