Where did you study constutional law? Rights granted in the constitution are subject to many restrictions. There is no explicit "freedom of association" in the Constitution, although it has been held to be implicit in freedom of speech. Free speech doctrine includes a "time, place, and manner" test that's applied to restrictions on speech when the government has a "significant interest" in the restriction[1] (e.g., national emergency for a viral pandemic). I don't know how the lockdowns (which are mostly not full lockdowns) would fare if Supreme Court were to apply the time, place, manner test, but I wouldn't presume to offer an offhand opinion that they're "probably illegal".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
A law has to exist that gives states and the federal government the ability to do what they are doing and that law needs to not violate special protections built into the Bill of Rights.
With a state of emergency declared, some things can temporarily be enacted that under normal circumstances would not be legal.
I don’t know if all the lock down rules are legal, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that governments have overstepped their bounds.
A) Everything is illegal for a citizen unless granted as legal by a state or federal govt.
B) The fed govt. can do anything it wants. The only things it cannot do are things that are expressly forbidden.
C) A state can do anything it wants unless a law prevents it.
D) A state of emergency does not expand the powers of the the state or fed govt.
Those are the reverse of what I said I remember and none of those sound right.
(for C/D, ignoring the supremacy clause)
I don't know if there is a "right" policy answer on what to do with something like that.
As someone else said, the lockdowns are probably illegal, you can't just throw away freedom of association over the flu. But if we didn't have them, we might have seen another 100k dead..