Posted on 07/30/2014 11:37:21 AM PDT by Kartographer
The context of the 21st century, however, is very different from that of 1918. Individual rights are guarded a lot more fiercely today than in the past, and people may not submit easily to compulsory quarantine or isolation. It is critical that if we were to implement such public health measures that we have adequate medical and psychological support, says Markel. "If you come down with the force of the law very hard, you have to ask if the public health edict helps public health or endangers it," he says. "The onus is on us as physicians, public health experts, government public health officers at the city, state and federal levels to embark on a huge educational campaign."
(Excerpt) Read more at content.time.com ...
These leaders?? Skills and wisdom?? These leaders??
Is that a joke or a rhetorical question?
Not true.
Many rights are now claimed which are not rights.
Natural rights endowed by the Creator are frequently trampled in pursuit of these new priorities.
True, but right now we have no "leaders".
lol
International air traffic is probably already taking a beating due to Ebola and MERS.
They won’t institute a quarantine until air traffic plummets and the diseases are spread to more countries.
So no. They do not have the wisdom to walk it. They will choose the course of inaction until forced to choose otherwise. Which will only be after many people have needlessly become ill.
Your’re kidding right?Our so called leaders would have us all dead before violating their PC values.
What authority do they have to walk it? I am familiar with the plans; if armed soldiers and police are on all major roads with shoot to kill orders when you desperately are trying to get home to your wife and small child knowing you are at low risk, are you okay with it? Do you think that when they send you to the “government isolation facility” you are coming out in anything other than a body bag? I’m not okay with it. I don’t want/need the government to protect me, I know how to avoid an epidemic just fine, and if not I’ll trust in God. Stay home, shelter in place and keep the damned government out of it.
All they are talking about is the quarantines that we used to have as kids in the 1950s.
If you are found to be in the infectious stage, then you are told to stay at home and a “quarantine” sign is posted out front.
“This study gives us real reason for optimism, that even reaching back to a time where there were no antiviral medications and no well-matched vaccines to fight a pandemic, the things communities did in terms of traditional public health tools — isolation, quarantine, social-distancing, canceling schools — made a big difference and have a lot of potential to mitigate the severity of a lethal disease pandemic.”
In time of epidemic, the Public Health Agency becomes the most authoritarian government department. They have the authority to order the police, and even the military, to follow their orders.
As necessary, their directives come at the barrel of a gun. If they order a city quarantined (though this almost invariably happens too late), this means armed guards with orders to “shoot to stop” any effort at breaking the quarantine.
They are not controlled by habeus corpus, that is, if they order a person kept in medical isolation, there is no judicial relief. This has been invoked a few times in recent years because of extensively drug resistant Tuberculosis. That person is detained indefinitely until no longer infectious, or dead. And even their body is under control until it can be safely disposed.
How can we trust quarantine orders from a government that ships kids, teens and young adults unscreened for TB and untreated for other infections on airlines and buses?
Yes, that is what the article is talking about, and that is a good idea. That may NOT be the plans that are currently in place, depending on the event severity and location.
When has that happened?
In Europe, going way back. The reason is that before the quarantine, people get infected and invisibly spread the disease, but the quarantine only goes into effect once people start showing symptoms.
And all the other human vices come into play as well, from denial and delay in instituting the quarantine, breaking the quarantine either to flee or to smuggle goods, etc.
Several books document it as well. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, about the great plague of 1665.
Albert Camus, The Plague (1947).
You posted about the United States, """the Public Health Agency, habeus corpus, judicial relief, drug resistant Tuberculosis order a city quarantined (though this almost invariably happens too late), this means armed guards with orders to “shoot to stop”, authoritarian government department. They have the authority to order the police, and even the military."""
What examples of American cities being quarantined with shoot to kill orders are you talking about?
You’re blending sentences to extrapolate from what I said. I said the Public Health Service has the authority, if necessary, in case of a severe epidemic, not just TB. In fact, because TB is so slow moving, only individuals are usually quarantined, and then only if they refuse treatment or have one of the more drug-resistant forms of the disease.
The instances I cited were of individuals, not cities, who had been quarantined with TB. The only city wide quarantine in our history was for smallpox in New York City during the colonial period. After that, US ports set up quarantine islands for incoming ships with communicable epidemic diseases. Some area quarantines were established during the Spanish Influenza epidemic, but these never grew to city size.
Otherwise, lesser epidemic diseases were mostly handled by private physicians who carried quarantine signs, which they would post on individual homes with a sick person inside.
“Robert Daniels was quarantined in 2007 for having the deadliest form of tuberculosis in an Arizona hospital, partly for not wearing a mask during his time in the outside world when he was diagnosed with the disease.
“In the summer of 2007, Atlanta attorney Andrew Speaker made headlines when, while traveling in Italy on his honeymoon, he was diagnosed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), a contagious, untreatable and potentially-lethal condition.
“Against the instructions of U.S. public health authorities, Speaker re-entered the U.S. only to be served by the CDC with a federal order of quarantine at a hospital in New York, the first such order to be issued in nearly half a century.
“Speaker challenged the CDC’s diagnosis of XDR-TB, resulting in an eventual downgrade of his condition and the lifting of restrictions on his movements. The Speaker case generated significant public attention and Congress conducted formal hearings regarding the incident.”
Under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 264), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states. The authority for carrying out these functions on a daily basis has been delegated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC utilizes two basic strategies when trying to contain a public outbreak of something as deadly as Ebola and they are Isolation and Quarantine.
By Executive Order of the president of the United States, federal isolation and quarantine are authorized for specific communicable diseases: cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and flu that can cause a pandemic.
http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/specificlawsregulations.html
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