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I read an apocalyptic novel a few months ago. It was placed in the USA, and the core assumption of the novel was that practically every agency in the federal government had armed troops. After sufficient build-up of these forces, one day the President took advantage of some crisis or other to declare martial law. Maybe this was inspired by the fact that lots of unlikely federal agencies do, in fact, have their own armed forces. Some of the stranger ones are: Dept. of Education, Food and Drug Administration, Internal Revenue Service and Post Office.
It was just a story, of course. Though one does wonder just why the Dept. of Education needs guns.
So now comes the CDC, proposing a new regulation. For those of you who are Americans, the CDC is accepting comments until October 14th. Here are some interesting excerpts:
The CDC "may promulgate regulations that provide for the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a quarantinable communicable disease in a qualifying stage."
Understandable, quarantine people who are infectious. By force, if necessary. Only, it continues:
"a 'qualifying stage' means that the communicable disease is in 'a precommunicable stage, if the disease would be likely to cause a public health emergency if transmitted to other individuals' or "a communicable stage."
So, non-infectious people, but still infected? Well, not exactly...
"CDC defines precommunicable stage to mean the stage beginning upon an individual's earliest opportunity for exposure to an infectious agent"
[Continues...]
So you don't have to actually be infected. An "opportunity for exposure" is sufficient. They want the authority to forcefully quarantine anyone who may have been exposed to a disease. Considering the Zika virus, this would presently include a large portion of the population of Florida, as well as anyone who has been there recently.
Should they apprehend someone, what happens then? Well...
"...quarantine, isolation, conditional release, medical examination, hospitalization, vaccination, and treatment ... the individual's consent shall not be considered as a prerequisite to any exercise of any authority under this part."
If you disagree with an action they take, you can appeal, of course. Your appeal must be in writing, and sent to the CDC. The CDC will review their own action and "issue a written response to an appeal, which shall constitute final agency action.".
I do understand that unusual circumstances may require unusual actions. However, the CDC has somehow existed a long time without this regulation, a regulation that would explicitly authorize them to apprehend, detain and treat anyone, anytime, anywhere within the US, without that person's consent. So...why do they need this?
Since consent is not required, it is implicit that they will have to create an internal force to make apprehensions and enforce quarantines. So yet another federal department will have its own, private armed force. Maybe that apocalyptic novel wasn't so far fetched after all...
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Sunday September 11 2016, @09:56PM
I always pushed the "FEMA camps" and other such stuff as more paranoid rantings, but a move like this is incredibly troubling and points towards an increase in police state methods / capabilities. Almost every year in the past handful has seen some disease get pushed disproportionately by the media. SARS, Flu, Zika have all been pretty much non-stories. Their effects so miniscule on the national level that the media coverage makes no sense. I would like to believe that it really is just paranoid nonsense, but a legal decision like this makes it harder and harder to ignore.
I'll pull my paranoia back a little, because I understand the potential for a disease to get out of control. After reading through some of the proposal I found:
By adding this definition, HHS/CDC is not changing its operations, but rather is codifying and providing an explanation to the public. Under this NPRM, reasonably believed to be infected, as applied to an individual, means specific articulable facts upon which a public health officer could reasonably draw the inference that an individual has been exposed...
Supposedly they already did these things, and now they are trying to codify/explain to the public the details of these procedures.
On the paranoid side, why are they doing this now with Zika (well known to not be that big of a deal)? And with this being accepted they can now roll it out on a wider scale... The ambiguously broad language is troubling. However, if a disease got spread because some people were allowed to travel before they display symptoms then everyone will cry and blame the government for not stopping it. Some CDC personnel will say they didn't have the authority to do what was necessary...
Argh, not sure just what to make of this! After a little reflection I don't think a grand conspiracy would work too well with this, I can't concoct a scenario where this plays into it too well, too many ways for such a plan to go sideways.
Thoughts? More control being grabbed by the government, or government informing citizens about how things will go down in an emergency? Given the number of US citizens that are hardcore individual liberty types, I can believe that a police/military presence would be needed to keep some people from leaving a quarantine area.
I should probably ignore all news sites, just keep on living and let the rest of you worry about this stuff, not doing my head any good!
~Tilting at windmills~