mandatory indefinite quarantine for H1N1 Swine Flu. WTF?

[advres]

So it's the governments fault for not stepping in after Katrina but it would also be the governments fault for not doing what they could to stop an epidemic. gotcha, I get it now.

Man you guys are fucking nuts. Go outside, live your lives until the evil governments takes it away from you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[spindrift]

It seems there might be some correlation between how much someone knows about politics and economics and how much they know about epidemiology...

This might shed some light on what you'd want to be prepared for if you ran the zoo: [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic[/ame] If you had half a brain.

A quick look at the CDC site (a very quick look) leads me to believe the stuff in question is based on federal templates - with a plan to tier quarantine approaches starting with home quarantine & escalating for specific reasons. Check out the assorted piles of stuff here: http://www2a.cdc.gov/phlp/H1N1flu.asp and http://www.doh.wa.gov/phepr/isoquar.htm

[hutash]

I'm old enough to have possibly developed antibodies when the H1N1 strain was around in the late 1950's. You youngsters are at higher risk than we old goats.

I just read that few if anybody under about 80 have any immunity, hence one of the big worries. CDC thought people like you would have some or partial immunity, but they have not been able to find it, so you are fucked just like the rest of us

Just as in the 1918 Spanish flu this virus tends to hit healthy people harder. If you were very young or very old you tended to survive in 1918, like my dad. If you had a nice healthy immune system it would over react, fill your lungs with fluid and fuck you up good, like my two uncles, and 30 odd million other people.

For all you tinfoil hatters out there, this flu, or some other future flu has the potential to kill millions of people. The Spanish flu could be a wimp compared since we live in much denser cities, travel more wildly, and rapidly, and tend to go to work and school whether we are l a little sick or nearly dead thanks to our "Capitalist" system that rewards us for working hard no matter what.

Once again, I am not saying this is going to happen, but just like Katrina, it is best to have plans in place, and some idea how to deal with a disaster of a scope most of you can't even imagine.

Besides if this was some leftwingnut conspiracy I doubt it would originate in Iowa of all places, but maybe that is part of the plot. Oh my god it's real...run for your guns and let's hide out in Jer's cabin, they will never take us alive

[hutash]

It seems there might be some correlation between how much someone knows about politics and economics and how much they know about epidemiology...

This might shed some light on what you'd want to be prepared for if you ran the zoo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic If you had half a brain.

A quick look at the CDC site (a very quick look) leads me to believe the stuff in question is based on federal templates - with a plan to tier quarantine approaches starting with home quarantine & escalating for specific reasons. Check out the assorted piles of stuff here: http://www2a.cdc.gov/phlp/H1N1flu.asp and http://www.doh.wa.gov/phepr/isoquar.htm

Common on, don't confuse the thread with facts and logic, geeeze what are you trying to do here?

We gots us a real govemint conspiracy here. First they take over GM, now they lock us up in death camps to spread pig disease, next they put LSD in our twinkies for mind control....run, run, grab your guns and the ammo you have been hording, the time has come to spill the blood of tyrants and democrats.

[13]

Anyone else notice that the notice begins "The Iowa DPH has determined that you have had contact with a person with Novel Influenza A H1N1."

Not "you have been tested and you are infected" -- just "we say you've been exposed, and we do not need ANY PROOF of this nor any reason other than our own say-so to incarcerate you."

Whoa there nellie! I'm as cynical of the government as anybody, but put down the pipe and chill out with the paranoid hyperbole.

1. The Novel Influenza A serotype can only be determined by immunoassay (lab test), not signs/symptoms alone.

2. Quarantine is not "incarceration." Depending on how severely affected you are by a pathogen, it either means quarantining in your own home or being put in an isolated wing of a hospital.

3. It takes less time to quarantine someone suspected of having Novel AH1N1 as a precaution than it does to conduct an accurate immunoassay to determine that they in fact have the Novel serotype and then quarantine them anyway. "A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" as they say.

4. Quarantine sucks, but usually people are very compliant since it's health care workers directing their care and they're going to feel like complete shit and miss work anyway.

[Mofro261]

no one ever said its happened yet, thats not the point, the point is there is legislation on the table pushing for it right now, and they are preparing for it to happen.

Hey dipshit, quarantine measures are ALREADY in place for a number of commutable infectious diseases. If there wasn't any preparation for H1N1 someone's ass would be on the line IF a significantly more virulent strain of H1N1 emerged.

[Dexter Rutecki]

Oh, gullible mofro. It's all a plan to turn us into nazi-commie-African-socialists. H1N1 is nothing more than the sniffles with a government conspiracy behind it.

[grrrr]

Yeah, absolutely! I think anyone who gets the flu should immediately have a rally to protest! And invite all the tea-baggers!

[hutash]

Yeah, absolutely! I think anyone who gets the flu should immediately have a rally to protest! And invite all the tea-baggers!

HeHeHe, that was solve a multitude of problems. I think we need something like Ebola to make it really work.

[OSECS]

HeHeHe, that was solve a multitude of problems. I think we need something like Ebola to make it really work.

Ebola, Obama, see the similarities ?? Both start with a vowel followed by a "b", followed by another vowel =followed by sequential letters in the alphabet and ending with an "a". Coincidence ?? I think not !!

Obviously something sinister's afoot.

[advres]

[powdork]

another problem with this:

If you are being quarantined with other people who have H1N1/ have just had contact with someone who has H1N1, how can you ever be let out if they are continuously having more contact with other people who have H1N1? Obviously at some point flu season will end but thats a long fucking time to be jailed against your will

it's true. you'd be in there 4ever. but don't worry, cuz eventually, everyone will either be quarantined or dead (quarantined doesn't sound so bad now does it?).


or maybe they just let you go about your business once your flu has run it's course.

[powdork]

seems like this would be a good reason to get the shot. if iowa comes out to Tahoe for me i could just show them my receipt.

[splat]

Yeah, it's not like the slow dismembering of all that financial legislation designed to protect us led to an economic collapse or anything.

[Dexter Rutecki]

it's true. you'd be in there 4ever. but don't worry, cuz eventually, everyone will either be quarantined or dead (quarantined doesn't sound so bad now does it?).


or maybe they just let you go about your business once your flu has run it's course.

I'm pretty sure that with H1N1 once you get over it you're immune and no longer contagious. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding of how most (if not all) flus work. So no endless quarantine, in the highly unlikely event anyone is ever quarantined.

[Tippster]

...next they put LSD in our twinkies for mind control....

Note to self: buy twinkies.

[splat]

I only know that iceman and I are in the age group with the least risk, so take your iPhones to camp, tune into tgr and we'll tell you what's going on outside the 100,000 volt fence.

LSD twinkies and DMT Starbucks to wash them down. That's what this fukking country needs. One big fukking spiritual sweatlodge with steam generated by the global warmings.

[NorthernSpotted...]

tower of Pizza

[SchralphMacchio]

What if you have possibly been in contact with a zombie?

[grrrr]

Dude, I was married to a zombie. Forget about quarantine, it's the undead alimony you have to worry about.

[Spats]

For the record, I don't believe for a moment that Iowa has malicious intent towards its citizens, nor that this is anything but a well-intentioned effort.

However, history is full of well-intentioned disasters -- Prohibition being the most obvious. Who could disagree with the goal of stopping alcohol addiction? But given the Obama administration's predilection for increasing executive and governmental power to spy, torture, and incarcerate without due process or legal protection (continued from Bush's policies of same), it's foolhardy to hand them this particular loaded gun and expect it not to be used against us.

Remember -- after 9/11, the first people to go on the "no-fly" list were...peace activists and Green Party officials. Do you really think quarantine regulations won't be abused in the same way?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...2FMN181034.DTL

spindrift: I'm familiar with the 1918 epidemic, having read multiple books on it. Two key differences everyone forgets to mention between then and now:

1) WE WERE IN WORLD WAR I when the epidemic started. The virus killed mostly younger people, who were all stuffed together in trenches (if you can think of a better way to transmit disease than people living in trenches, except perhaps anal sex, please let me know) -- and then traveled around the world as they came home when the war ended in late 1918.

2) We have instant uncensored mass communication now, which we didn't, then, given that the war was still going on. "Spain, a neutral country in WWI, had no special censorship for news against the disease and its consequences. Hence the most reliable news on the disease came from Spain, giving the false impression that Spain was the most—if not the only—affected zone." -Wikipedia again

Seriously: a LOLcat makes it around the entire Internet in about 24 hours. If there were a legitimate H1N1 outbreak (which there has not yet been), everyone would know within about half a day, and at that point, anyone not smart enough to self-quarantine probably deserves to be flushed out of the gene pool.

[splat]

“Ritmo” … a concentration camp for the whole family


Photo Credit: By Kirsten Luce For The Washington Post

By Spencer S. Hu and Silvia Moreno, Washington Post

Friday, February 2, 2007

RAYMONDVILLE, Tex. — Ringed by barbed wire, a futuristic tent city rises from the Rio Grande Valley in the remote southern tip of Texas, the largest camp in a federal detention system rapidly gearing up to keep pace with Washington’s increasing demand for stronger enforcement of immigration laws.


But civil liberties and immigration law groups allege that out of sight, the system is bursting at the seams. In the Texas facility, they say, illegal immigrants are confined 23 hours a day in windowless tents made of a Kevlar-like material, often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones. Many are transferred from the East Coast, 1,500 miles from relatives and lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel.

“I call it ‘Ritmo’ — like Gitmo, but it’s in Raymondville,” said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer from nearby Harlingen.
An inspector general’s report last month on a sampling of five U.S. immigration detention facilities found inhumane and unsafe conditions, including inadequate health care, the presence of vermin, limited access to clean underwear and undercooked poultry. Although ICE standards require that immigrants have access to phones and pro bono law offices, investigators found phones missing, not working or connected to non-working numbers.


In Willacy County, one of the country’s poorest, ICE has set up 10 huge tents on concrete pads, surrounded by 14-foot-high chain-link fences looped with barbed wire. Each “sprung structure” holds about 200 men or women, divided into four “pods.” Similar temporary buildings were used for troop recreational facilities in Iraq.

The center is part of a chain of facilities in South Texas with 6,700 new immigration detention beds. At a cost of $78 a night per bed (compared with an ICE average of $95 a bed), the Willacy facility is not only cheaper than any bricks-and-mortar prison but also faster to construct, move or dismantle, Mead said.


Detainees are subject to penal system practices, such as group punishment for disciplinary infractions. The tents are windowless and the walls are blank, and no partitions or doors separate the five toilets, five sinks, five shower heads and eating areas. Lacking utensils on some days, detainees eat with their hands.

Because lights are on around the clock, a visitor finds many occupants buried in their blankets throughout the day. The stillness and torpor of the pod’s communal room, where 50 to 60 people dwell, are noticeable.

Goodwin described a group of women who huddled in a recreation yard on a recent 40-degree day with a 25-mph wind. “They had no blanket, no sweat shirt, no jacket,” she said. “Officers were wearing earmuffs, and detainees were outside for an hour with short-sleeved polyester uniforms and shower shoes and not necessarily socks.”

Perhaps more troubling, lawyers said, large numbers of immigrants have been transferred from Boston, New York, New Jersey and Florida, far from their families and lawyers. Because some immigration judges do not permit hearings by teleconference, detainees are essentially deprived of counsel.
Immigration violators in the United States are held on civil grounds and have no right to appointed lawyers. But federal guidelines call for providing them law libraries, telephones and phone numbers for legal aid.

Joining a lawsuit last week, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that severe overcrowding at a Corrections Corp. facility in San Diego poses an unconstitutional risk to detainees’ health and safety, arguing that as administrative detainees, illegal immigrants should be treated better than convicted criminals.

No wonder they scrimp on the food. Stalag L. Don Hutto L. Don Hutto Concentration Camp Residential Center is run as a profit making enterprise by Corrections Corporation of America. And, heck, the overhead is enough from fingerprinting the babies. You can’t expect them to pay for little things like heaters or telephones.

[Neurodoc]

Hey dipshit, quarantine measures are ALREADY in place for a number of commutable infectious diseases.

Yes. For example, in the U.S. and around the world, you can be involuntarily detained for failing to comply with treatment for tuberculosis.

And for good reason, too, as non-compliance with antibiotic treatment can lead to the development of multidrug-resistant TB. And a DNA-fingerprinting study in San Francisco demonstrated that one individual with TB can (and did) infect a large number of other people.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/330/24/1703

[GeezerSteve]

But given the Obama administration's predilection for increasing executive and governmental power to spy, torture, and incarcerate without due process or legal protection (continued from Bush's policies of same), it's foolhardy to hand them this particular loaded gun and expect it not to be used against us.

Huh? Where is the evidence of this alleged predilection? In fact, Obama's adminstration is adding back many of the due process protections stripped by GWB's admin, but when he does, Fox News condemns him of being soft on security. People ought to stop listening to the boogeyman scare tactics of Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc.

[splat]

I understand your advocacy of blind compliance.
But that's what happened in Hitler's Germany.
There's a reason our free speech needs to be protected and that is to make certain all the fears and questions regarding any policy are addressed. Almost 40 years ago, I read None Dare Call It Conspiracy, the book that predicted the world economy would be manipulated until it became a corporatocracy for the few at the top. For decades, even mentioning that book would get you labeled a Communist. Thankfully, nothing in that book ever came to be...

There's nothing wrong with a little fear mongering question asking when so many wrongs have occurred in the past that were promoted as 'for the betterment of all.'