How about we never find ourselves thinking “yeah, let’s have armed security forces locking up private citizens who have done nothing wrong” as some acceptable mindset of “protecting everyone else”.
It’s weird…I feel like there is some example of a government declaring a racial/ethnic/religious groups as a threat due to being a “disease”. If only I could put my finger on what it was.
You want Nazis? Because this is how you get Nazis.
YES. Have you ever READ the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? I’m thinking not.
So, I’m aware that this could always change later, as things get worse, but I know people who were rounded up and quarantined in the first round, and have already been released. They also had internet access the entire time they were in quarantine.
When the first evacuation flight for US citizens took off from China, the people boarding were told they would be landing at a commercial airport. Midway, they were told the plane was landing at a military base and everyone would be placed in quarantine. Direct force wasn’t involved, but if anyone had tried to break quarantine and leave the base, it would have been.
Your expectation that the US would never use force to quarantine anyone is just so bizarre.
I can reject Nazis and the appropriation of science without ignoring the danger of ‘literal’ disease to society. Medicine is about harm reduction. You have to be able to talk about the point when forcing a few into quarantine is less harmful than letting the virus spread.
Your refusal to take appropriate measures to protect ‘everyone’ is a vain attempt to protect ‘yourself’.
At what point did I say the US would never do such a thing?
You have an individual here stating that using force is completely acceptable in certain situations. I am stating the opposite of that; force should never be used. I have not nor am I stating the US would never do said thing. You reading it that way is so bizarre.
Additionally, the scenario you are describing is different than the one discussed in the BB post. Asking people incoming who may be infected with a disease to spend a small time in quarantine is NOT the same as security breaking into their homes and dragging them off somewhere else.
A difference between you and me seems to be that I don’t count people knowingly putting others at risk of disease as “doing nothing wrong.” Which is not to say that it’s clear to me that 2019-nCoV represents such a degree of risk, which is more than I know.
There are a metric ton of anti-vaxxers in this country whom I would love to see locked up for being stupid…but while I think they are fucking dangerous idiots, I am not nor will I ever call for them to be forcibly removed from their homes and locked away citing some notion of “safety of others”.
There are circumstances we do such a thing…example: violent offenders, severe mental illness, can illicit the response of “this person is a danger to themselves and others” but…AGAIN…this is not the same as sending the military, police, of even the WHO or CDC to en masse drag citizens from their homes.
At no point should anyone be saying “Ya know what…I think that’s a perfectly fine response/plan.”
I’m not arguing that it’s perfect and everyone should be happy about it. But yes, there is a point where they are a danger to others and you seem to then say: “No, can’t do it. They have the right to infect others. It’s in the Constitution. We all just have to ride it out and people will preventably die. Oops.”
Edit: I don’t see anti-vaxxers as beyond that point. They are a risk, not a danger to that degree.
I think they are. The CDC issued a mandatory quarantine of US citizens evacuated from Wuhan. If any of them had chosen to ignore that mandatory quarantine, they would have been physically detained, using whatever force was required to do so. Because that’s what mandatory means.
Hope here in the US there will never be a sitiation when people are forcibly quaranteened. But it will happen if the government see it necessary, there are already scenarios for it. However ugly, it might be necessary. While it might seem a desperate action, one could revise their opinion when they imagine a loved one exposed to a deadly infectious desease by someone who refuses to be quaranteened. Since this virus can be transmitted for two weeks before the carrier shows symptoms (if s/he shows any at all), it’s a miracle that it’s not spread more widely.
The United States government did not forcefully drag people off into prison camps in an attempt to contain the 1918 flu pandemic. So your suggestion that “any government would do the same” is demonstrably incorrect.
