If I get the Flu, I'm not telling anyone

[TomB]

It looks as if the police state is going to make sure that people who get the swine flu, won't spread it.

Cops jump on swine-flu power: Shots heard 'round the world (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108604)

Massachusetts, North Carolina, Iowa, Florida and Washington are making laws to enable the police to break down doors, grab people and place them into isolation. This sounds like Germany of the 1930's and 40's. All it took then was for anyone to point a finger at someone and the Gestapo took care of business.

My first defense has nothing to do with the flu. It is to hide a sneeze, cough, or any outward sign that I might be sick. Doesn't matter if I'm sick or not, just hide it. 2nd defense, well, lets not go there.

[ShottleBop]

Actually, the federal government--and many states--probably already have the power to do things like that. Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB): Quarantine and Isolation (http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/86251.pdf); Quarantine Law, by Paula Mindes (http://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/Bioterrorism/6Quarantine/PHLaw03.htm). From the second document: The public health powers in state statutes include: compulsory examination and treatment, emergency detention and quarantine. Quarantine may be defined as either in-home isolation or commitment to state facilities. These measures are accomplished through public health orders or court orders. Some states have civil and/or criminal penalties for failing to comply with a such an order. Other statutes do not spell out penalties.

Some statutes define which diseases are contagious and therefore subject to quarantine regulations. Others authorize state health departments to decide which illnesses are contagious. Some empower public health authorities to make quarantine or isolation decisions without any direction as to illnesses or conditions.

Thirty-three states permit authorities to isolate people in their homes. In most cases there are no due process protections specified out in the law.

Forty-two states permit commitment to treatment facilities. Thirty-six states require a court order to commit someone to a facility. Several do not require a court order or a hearing. Generally court orders will be initiated by a petition from public health authorities requesting a hearing. Written notice to the person concerned is usually required, but the hearing may be held with or without the patient. Only thirteen states explicitly grant the right to be represented by counsel in any part of the proceedings. Of these, eleven will provide counsel to indigent individuals.

Release is accomplished when a determination is made that the person is no longer a threat to the public health, or no longer infectious. Some statutes specify criteria for release which may be vague ("no longer a danger to the public health") or specific (evidence in sputum tests that the person is no longer actively contagious). Ten states have no statutory time limits on the length of time a patient may be held without discharge or recommitment. In many states the only explicit due process protection afforded persons who are quarantined is the opportunity to petition the court for release.

[TomB]

"Probably" is not why these new laws are being enacted. This flu is mild compared to the common cold. But these new laws will become the new law of the land. In its zeal to protect us, government will force us to be protected.
...
The picture of Enelon Ganzales resonates. Who and what did those FBI storm troopers protect?

[Vicki NC]

I know this is off topic, but who is Enelon Ganzales?

[Dis-N-Dat]

It looks as if the police state is going to make sure that people who get the swine flu, won't spread it.

Cops jump on swine-flu power: Shots heard 'round the world (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108604)

Massachusetts, North Carolina, Iowa, Florida and Washington are making laws to enable the police to break down doors, grab people and place them into isolation. This sounds like Germany of the 1930's and 40's. All it took then was for anyone to point a finger at someone and the Gestapo took care of business.

My first defense has nothing to do with the flu. It is to hide a sneeze, cough, or any outward sign that I might be sick. Doesn't matter if I'm sick or not, just hide it. 2nd defense, well, lets not go there.


How funny Tom, I posted this under another thread this morning. Yikes! As long as we're not potenitally infecting others, I see nothing wrong with just keeping our mouths closed...sorry I'll be out for a week...family emergency (not specifically a lie)

[ShottleBop]

I know this is off topic, but who is Enelon Ganzales?

Elian Gonzalez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elian_Gonzalez_affair)

The WND is acting like Chicken Little. Look at provisions of Ohio law that have been in place since the 5-s, folks: IV. OHIO QUARANTINE LAW

A. Ohio Revised Code

Relevant statutory law is found under the power of counties to establish hospitals and under the powers of the department of health and the board of health. Some still-current sections were in place before 1953 when the General Code became the Revised Code. Quarantine measures under Ohio law included isolating people in their own homes as well as removing them to public facilities. In 1949 the Attorney General considered whether "home quarantine", authorized under § 4429, General Code was an appropriate exercise of the police power. Medical authority at the time discouraged in-home care because it spread infection to others in the household and did not provide the most effective treatment. The Attorney General expressed concern about the "social and economic embarrassment" involved in placarding a home and isolating the whole family. Balancing the health benefit (or lack thereof, according to medical experts) against liberty interests and social stigma, he opined that "in view of control measures now available" home quarantine would be arbitrary and unreasonable under normal circumstances. Contemporary society thinks removing people from their homes to treat their illness may be inhumane. When this opinion was written, the opposite may have been true, at least for illnesses requiring long-term care.

In 1951, § 4429-1 of the Ohio General Code provided the department of health with the power to "at once ... cause [someone with a communicable disease] to be separated from susceptible persons in such places and under such circumstances as will prevent the ... conveyance of the infectious agents ... and shall enforce such restrictive measures as may be prescribed by the state department of health."

Ohio law has several provisions which govern quarantine generally. Under § 3701 of the Ohio Revised Code, the department of health has the authority to "declare and enforce" or "modify, relax and abolish" quarantines. It may make other rules for preventing communicable disease. The chapter also provides that individuals shall not knowingly fail to prevent transmission of their illness to others. Those who care for sick individuals, and those who "have charge of a public conveyance or place of public accommodation" shall not recklessly or negligently fail to protect others; or fail to inform health authorities of the presence of contagion. Criminal penalties are available under quarantine law, but they do not appear to have been much used. The statutes and cases do express the obligations of infected persons and others to avoid the spread of infection.

Ohio quarantine regulations are very sweeping in the power granted to boards of health. They are also sweeping in their potential effect on people's lives. Most of the provisions below were effective when the code was revised in 1953, and were carried over from similar provisions in the General Code. Quarantine regulations are covered under § 3707. Key provisions include the following:

§ 3707.06 - Physicians or other persons "called to attend" persons with contagious diseases are required to report to the health commissioner "the name, age, sex, and color [sic] of the patient."

§ 3707.07 - In case of a complaint or reasonable belief that there is infectious disease at a particular place, the board of health shall have it inspected, and may either send the sick person to a facility, or quarantine the location, including any people exposed to the disease.

§ 3707.08 - Where there is infectious disease, the board shall isolate infected persons and those exposed, and have the location placarded. Anyone isolated or quarantined must have written permission to leave locations to which they are restricted.

§ 3707.14 - When people are quarantined the board of health is obligated to provide food, fuel and other necessities, at public expense if necessary.

§ 3707.16, .20 - Quarantined persons may not attend school, places of worship or other public gatherings. They may not be sent to any institution such as a jail, children's home, or institution for the blind or mentally ill without notice of their illness or exposure.

Significant changes were made in 1955, with the passage of Amended House Bill 127, "'[t]he Recalcitrant Tuberculosis Law' enacted to protect society and based upon the legal principle that liberty implies absence from arbitrary restraint, not immunity from reasonable regulations imposed in the interest of society". This legislation was considered to be a significant advance, "protective rather than punitive." It put in place the specific mechanisms for implementing § 339.40, infra, evidentiary requirements, and mechanisms for release. There is no mention of the right to counsel, however.

Key provisions of Chapter 339 include the following:

§ 339.40 - when proper presentation of facts has been made, the board of health is authorized to order the removal of persons with TB who are a menace to public health and cannot be treated at home. If someone is suspected of having TB on the basis of medical evidence, that person may be compelled to be examined regularly until certified as "free from tuberculosis in a communicable stage."

§ 339.51 - evidence of communicable TB consists of laboratory reports of sputum or other body fluid which are positive for the presence of TB bacilli, or chest X-rays which show active TB. A sputum test showing bacteria means the person is considered to have active TB for three months or until three successive tests show no bacilli.

§ 339.52-.60 a board of health may request an order from the probate court to remove someone to a tuberculosis facility. The board must file an application with the court alleging that the person is suffering from TB, is a menace to public health, and has either "refused to enter or has absented himself from a tuberculosis hospital against medical advice." After an application has been filed, a hearing is scheduled. The person named in the application must receive a summons no less than three days before the hearing. The judge examines any witness from the board of health and any others. The hearing may be conducted without the person summoned, if he or she does not appear.

If the judge determines the allegations of the application are true, "the ... court shall enter a commitment order committing the person to a facility." When someone is committed, she or he remains hospitalized until discharged. After ninety days a patient may apply to the same probate court to be discharged. The discharge is requested on the grounds that the patient no longer has communicable TB, and thus is not a menace to public health. The court holds a hearing within seven days. If it determines that the patient is not infectious, the discharge will be ordered, but not otherwise. Patients may also be released when an appropriate public health official certifies they are no longer a menace to the community.

There is no other mechanism for requesting release under this section, but see the discussion of section 3707, infra.

[Dis-N-Dat]

Very true. When I was an infant my eldest sister cared for me while my mom spent a year quarantined in a TB hospital.

Probably not a whole lot different, it's just that most of us haven't seen it in our lifetimes.

[ShottleBop]

The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (http://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/Bioterrorism/7ModelState/PHLaw01a.htm) was promulgated in 2001, folks, in response to scares like the anthrax mailings. (Click on "Model State Act"). According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_State_Emergency_Health_Powers_Act): "Model State Emergency Health Powers Act" is used when a town or state is faced with a "Pandemic" situation.

Examples would be; "Swine Flu", this law enables the Government to seize/quarantine a town and all the people within.

Once Quarantined the government would be allowed to seize all property and seize the rights of the people to resist government (i.e confiscating all civilian owned firearms.).

This will be done to control the population and is only for the protection of government forces.

The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) is a proposal by the Center for Law and the Public's Health, a joint venture of Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University, to aid America's state legislatures in revising their public health laws to, as proponents put it, more effectively control epidemics and respond to bioterrorism.

The proposal has been criticized for what has been called a "sweeping reach" that could be abused by governments.

The initial proposal was drafted at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by Lawrence O. Gostin, an attorney at the Washington, D.C., center, during the anthrax letter scare in fall 2001. It took him "three to four weeks' to do so, he said.

The draft, dated October 23, 2001, was produced by Gostin without consultation from any of the various groups he listed on the title page as being "in collaboration with", namely, the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Attorneys General, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and the National Association of City and County Health Officials. The claim of collaboration was an error, and a later version, dated December 21, 2001, made the revised statement on its title page that the law was a "draft for discussion … to assist" those organizations. [1]

The model act subsequently came under the aegis of the Turning Point National Collaborative on Public Health Statute Modernization to revise state health laws. On September 16, 2003, a third draft of the law was issued. On June 15, 2004. it won the 2004 Distinguished Achievement in Public Health Law Award from the Public Health Law Association.

The model act would revise some subjects covered by existing public health laws, such as reporting of contagious diseases, disposal of the dead, and quarantines.

Critics said, however, that it did so in such sweeping language that it "could turn governors into dictators" as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons claimed, and Phyllis Schlafly called it "an unprecedented assault on the constitutional rights of the American people."

The very definition of a "public health emergency," which triggered the law's provisions, critics said, was so broad that an influenza outbreak could qualify as an "emergency". The LAMBDA Legal Defense and Education Fund feared it could lead to imprisonment of those with AIDS.

But attorneys Jason W. Sapsin, Stephen P. Teret; Scott Burris, Julie Samia Mair, James G. Hodge Jr, Jon S. Vernick and Gostin wrote in an article in the August 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., that "Provided those powers are bounded by legal safeguards, individuals should be required to yield some of their autonomy, liberty, or property to protect the health and security of the community." [2] This is one of the classic uses of the police power of a sovereign state.

George J. Annas, a lawyer at the Boston University School of Public Health and the MSEHPA's leading critic, said: "The Model Act seems to have been drafted for a different age; it is more appropriate for the United States of the 19th century than for the United States of the 21st century." Annas said the law was unconstitutional.

As of April 15, 2006, 32 states have introduced 92 legislative bills or resolutions that are based upon or feature provisions related to the articles or sections of the act. Of these bills, 37 had passed.

Why all of a sudden does WND have its panties in a bunch over another state or three joining the crowd? (Which is not to deny that the Act is pretty sweeping; it's just that the time to have gotten our hackles up over it would have been years ago, before it had already been made law in over half of the states.)

[fgummett]

...As long as we're not potentially infecting others, I see nothing wrong with just keeping our mouths closed...I understood that was the advice -- at least here in Canada... if you think you have the flu, stay home

[fgummett]

This flu is mild compared to the common cold. Really :confused:

[slipperyelm]

What??? You would really rather have influenza than a cold? You must have meant to say something else.

[Vicki NC]

Thanks ShottleBop--I was confused.

[TomB]

Ooops, that compared to thing didn't come out right.
Tom

[DeusXM]

WorldNetDaily - yeah, there's a balanced news source.

You are aware the whole purpose of WND is to shill books through spreading fear, right?

[G_W]

I still don't understand what the fuss over the swine flu is.

For all-cause deaths, CDC estimates that approximately 51,000 deaths are associated with flu. This represents 2.2% of all deaths.
That's right from the CDC at this page. (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm)

How many deaths have we had from the swine flu? Just over 500.