Alleged lawbreakers across the United States have started using the threat of deadly Covid-19 infection as a weapon in attacks on the police, retail clerks and grocers trying to keep the nation fed during lockdown.
Threats of spreading Covid-19 have occurred from coast to coast, raising questions about whether states will move to criminalise the weaponisation of the coronavirus, the way more than half of US states made undisclosed HIV exposure a crime when the Aids crisis erupted in the 1980s.
A Michigan man wiped his nose and face on the shirt of a store employee who was trying to enforce a mask-wearing requirement. The 68-year-old man was charged with misdemeanour assault and battery and, if convicted, faces three months behind bars and a US$500 (S$710) fine.
In St Petersburg, Florida, a man coughed and spat on the police and threatened to spread the virus as they responded to domestic violence calls at his home. He faces up to five years in prison on federal charges of perpetrating a biological weapons hoax after his test results came back negative.
A San Antonio, Texas, man claimed in a Facebook post that he had paid someone to spread the coronavirus at grocery stores. While his threat was deemed false, he too was arrested and charged with a biological weapons hoax.
He claimed he was trying to deter people from visiting stores in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, federal prosecutors in Texas said.
New Jersey is among the first states to consider making it a crime to issue a "credible threat to infect another with Covid-19 or similar infectious disease that triggered public emergency", said a spokesman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Advocates for HIV-positive people said states drafting such laws should be careful not to make them so broad that they punish poor and minority communities as studies show that HIV decriminalisation has, according to the Williams Institute on S3xual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy at UCLA School of Law.
Over the past four decades, at least 26 states have passed laws to criminalise HIV exposure. Crimes range from biting to donating blood, and in most cases no HIV infection is required for a person to be charged with "criminal transmission of HIV".
Several studies have found that HIV decriminalisation laws targeted minorities, said Mr Brad Sears, associate dean of public interest law at UCLA Law School. Those laws were created in reaction to a negative stereotype of "a predatory gay or bis3xual man", he said.
In New Jersey, a Bill by Republican Senator Kristin Corrado to punish anyone convicted of threatening to spread Covid-19 with up to 10 years behind bars and a US$150,000 fine is up before the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee this week.
REUTERS