US government plans to treat sick people (flu) “like potential enemies”

[donsu]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/flu-j19.shtml


Possible flu pandemic: US government plans to treat sick people “like potential enemies”


The Bush administration’s emergency plan for a possible flu pandemic involves essentially police-state methods that have nothing to do with effectively combating the illness.

This was the finding of a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) January 14 that criticized the government’s preparations for a pandemic. The study outlined how federal agencies have been adopting an increasingly heavy-handed approach toward what should be considered a public health problem.

-snip-

The panel also discussed the fact that the current policies heavily emphasize the need for coerced vaccinations and military-enforced quarantines. “History shows that treating sick people like potential enemies only spurs them to avoid the authorities and exacerbates the spread of disease,” said Parmet.

-snip-

The avian flu is by nature a communicable disease, therefore to stop the spread of the virus by calling for “individual responsibility” is absurd. A rational plan would involve a large-scale collective effort to prepare and coordinate all emergency services possible in the event of such a disaster.

In 2003, when the province of Ontario in Canada faced a SARS outbreak, the government provided income assistance for people to stay home if they were sick. The fact that the US government must openly rely upon more draconian measures points to the dilapidated state of the health infrastructure in America.

-snip-

“Individuals refusing to be vaccinated or treated shall be liable for a misdemeanor. may be subject to isolation or quarantine... An order of the public health authority given to effectuate the purposes of this Section shall be immediately enforceable by any peace officer.”

Thus, citizens would be treated not as patients but as criminals. The proposed act also included provisions that would have exempted public health officials and their underlings from prosecution if their vaccine killed the patient.
-long snip-
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neo con control freaks at work again

if it can't make them money they don't bother.

[Deja Q]

1. Please can the tinfoil.

Why not let sick people out, in turn they infect far more people.

What the hell. Let's have no solution. That's better than a solution.

:sarcasm:

[Gman]

2. Right wing ideology in action

another social experiment just like New Orleans.

[LulaMay]

3. They've done it before; remember 'Typhoid Mary'...people sent away.

[Warpy]

4. The thing that makes avian flu deadly also makes it non communicable

unless people are confined together in very close quarters. That's why there are so few documented cases of person to person transmission.

The flu causes a severe lower respiratory illness but very little in the upper respiratory system. Coughing is ineffective in producing the fine droplets that spread ordinary flu. If it mutates into a form that can be more easily spread, then the infection will have to center higher in the respiratory system, and that change will make it less deadly.

There have been indications that the virus is mutating in just this direction. However, pigs are next, and then people. By that time, we will likely have a vaccine for it in the first and second world. It will devastate the third world.