These assumptions do derive from, and the proposed pass-law policies are the apotheosis of, a blithe attitude about the U.S. program of mandatory childhood vaccination that we have been inculcated with, and that I hope this situation will bring more people to allow themselves to question. The US has gone from 3 doses in the 1960s, to 24 in 1983, to 72 now, a proliferation fueled by the passage of a 1986 law exempting vaccine makers from liability. This is far from the norm in other countries. We have, indeed, become inured to accepting any childhood vaccine that comes along and Daddy-CDC insists on, and mandatory vaccination for college students was the camel's nose for adult mandates.
So, please do look carefully at the childhood mandatory schedule, because you're looking at your future. When will you allow yourself to doubt? On the 3rd booster, or the 8th one? On the 2nd vaccine for an apocalyptic virus, the 24th or the 72nd? Will you then look at all the science without preconception? Will you then try to squirm off the logic you hoisted yourself on? Will you then want solidarity from those you house-arrested or forced to take the drug, and ridiculed? Or will you just continue to do what you're told? Because I guarantee this is not stopping with SARS-COV2.
Past Prologue
To understand how important it is to reject any attempt to instrumentalize an issue like this for useless partisan and culture-war purposes, we have to go way back in the mists of American historical time, to 2014, when a similar issue arose regarding the Ebola virus.
This was a pathogen that causes a hemorrhagic fever that eats your blood vessels from the inside out, and for which "There is no cure or specific treatment." When it was clear that the virus had arrived in the U.S., killing one man in Texas and infecting two of his caregivers, a debate arose about whether to temporarily quarantine health workers returning from treating Ebola patients in Africa. Initially, both NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and NJ Governor Chris Christie wanted to quarantine those coming back into the NYC airports, with Christie saying: "the government's job is to protect the safety and health of our citizens," and "I don't think when you're dealing with something as serious as this you can count on a voluntary system. This is the government's job."
But it quickly became a partisan political football. Brouhaha ensued when Kaci Hickox, an American nurse, arrived at EWR after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, and became the first person placed in mandatory quarantine. Obama administration "officials" said the policy was "not grounded in science." Dr. yupAnthony Fauci, insisted that quarantining people who had been in contact with one of the world's deadliest diseases is "a little bit draconian." He and Obama's UN Ambassador Samantha Power worried that quarantines would risk "disincentive[izing]"our heroes, the health-care workers, [who] go there and help us to protect America."
When Christie let Kaci out of quarantine early, the right-wing, led by Rush Limbaugh, accused him of "caving" to Obama. Meanwhile, over at MSDNC, Chris Hayes and his guests opined about how brave Kaci had stood up to Christie's attempt to "bully" her, and how the right was using "fear "to drive conservative votes in a mid-term... fear of cells, basically."
Chris solemnly reminded us that "A mandatory quarantine is a pretty big deal... Quarantine is an extreme step. The public-health version of martial law." And one of his guests stressed that: "one of things you have to think through with quarantine if you're going to exercise loss of liberty is, are you going to enforce that loss of liberty?" He pointed out that the last time a "controversial" policy "of th[is] scale" was "decreed," when New York City quarantined some TB patients in the early '90s, it was accompanied with "a system of checks and balances. Patients had the right to a court hearing "a lawyer paid for by the city, and court review every three months. There was, in other words, due process." Not like how the bad Republican governor "ordered a nurse into forced isolation for three days "with no state-appointed lawyer, no hearing, or process of appeals."
I can't make this stuff up.
The same people who pontificated about the "scale" of the not-scientifically-grounded, "draconian" "extreme step," the "public-health version of martial law" that would "disincentivize" our heroic health-care workers--putting a few people who were in close contact with the deadliest virus in the world in temporary quarantine--are now insisting that, for a disease that has a ~0.27% infection-fatality rate, the government can fire and socially-exile everyone, including health-care workers, who won't take a drug that will not protect them from being sick or infectiousness. Did I miss the part about the right to a state-appointed lawyer, a court hearing, and court review every three months? 'Cause you really have to think through how you are going to "enforce that loss of liberty."
Are you
following the bouncing ball "science"?
It is astounding to me (no, it really isn't, unfortunately) that this stark reversal of partisan political polarity--right-wing Republican vs. liberal Democrat--regarding the state's assertion of authority in public-health emergencies, a mere seven years ago, has gone effectively unnoticed in the incessant punditry over the present viral crisis. I feel like I'm in a medical version of the movie Yesterday. Did everyone forget the Beatles, too?
I wrote an article about this at the time, because I thought a temporary quarantine of a few people in these circumstances wasn't outrageous, as I thought a few weeks of lockdown to "flatten the curve" at the beginning of this pandemic, when we didn't know who was most infected, was reasonable--because I was focused on what a full analysis of the science justified, what was socially responsible and respectful of rights and best for public health, and because, for me, none of these considerations has anything to do with Obama or Trump or Republicans or Democrats or what's useful for winning the next election, or any of the utterly ridiculous fights they manage to corral even many smart leftists into.
There's an agenda here, which has nothing to do with health and science. Anyone who, seven years ago, was railing against temporary quarantine as "medical martial law" and is now embracing vaccine mandates and passports and a permanent, vast regime of segregation and social control, and doesn't think they're enmired in the RepubliDem mud, is, well, kidding themselves.
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