Before somebody comes in here railing about government overreach, she was ordered to get treated or stay in isolation in January 2022 and hasn't complied, instead going out in the community and putting others at risk. Moreover, this was her 17th court hearing, so it's not like this was their immediate reaction.
From the article:
> But, the department seemed to reach a breaking point this January. In addition to the woman's defiance hitting the one-year mark, on January 11 she was involved in a car accident as a passenger. The incident clearly showed the woman was violating her self-isolation order, which put the driver at risk of infection. Additionally, the woman went to the emergency department a day later complaining of chest pain and did not tell doctors about her active tuberculosis case, putting them and other hospital staff at risk. When they did lung X-rays, they initially suspected she had cancer. But in fact, the images showed that her tuberculosis case was worsening.
The facts you quote are orthogonal to the notion that this is government overreach. If it’s government overreach to order her to get medical treatment it doesn’t matter how much notice she’s been given.
It's not that she's been given notice many times; its that she's continued to take actions that threaten the health of the community - which have led to those notices.
The comment of mine you’re replying to is specifically about notice as it relates to the notion of government overreach - it is replying to a comment that is also about those things. (That’s about all I have opinions on here, so I render no judgment on your point)
To my understanding the current law of the land as affirmed by the supreme court many times over the last 150 years is you can not be compelled to be treated for an infectious disease but you absolutely can be isolated against your will if you are a danger to others, as well as other sanctions like fines.
This doesn’t relate to what I said. The point is that for those who believe this is government overreach saying “she had plenty of notice” is a non sequitur.
If you believe something is a right, giving more notice before abrogating it does not factor into whether it is a rights violation.
Everything I’ve said here, by the way, is true regardless of your position on the court’s action (on which I’ve stated no position). If people believe (six people here and counting, and I’m not saying you’re one of them) that they need to downvote a basic factual observation because it vaguely seems to contradict their opinions, maybe they should examine why they so lack confidence in their opinions.
It does actually. Under the framework of the government in the US the Supreme Court decides what’s over reach, not your internal feelings. One could argue the existence of a government at all is over reach and they’re in many ways right. But they’re also irrelevant opinions because they have no authority. Ultimately those who hold the guns and prisons decide the scope of their power and we have collectively agreed that scope is the interpretation of the supreme court and the constitutional laws passed by the legislature. So, until you can provide something that is the opinion of the Supreme Court, you’re just factually wrong. Your opinion of right and wrong, while you’re entitled to it, is completely irrelevant.
The notice is relevant because it’s indicative of due process and an attempt to respect her individual rights and balance it with the public good, which she has repeatedly ignored and results in the escalation to the rightful isolation.
Throwing someone immediately into a sanitarium for having tuberculosis vs. throwing them in jail after 17 court visits because they wouldn’t stay away from other people is a massive difference.
Ignoring all details and focusing on just the end result as if that’s all that matters leads to foolish ignorance.
Furthermore, they didn’t order her to get medical treatment. They ordered her to stay away from potential victims if she didn’t get treated.
> Throwing someone immediately into a sanitarium for having tuberculosis vs. throwing them in jail after 17 court visits because they wouldn’t stay away from other people is a massive difference.
A “massive difference” in many contexts but not for those who oppose mandatory medical treatment.
Who else would possibly argue that this is government overreach than people with that belief?
This isn’t about mandatory medical treatment because the medical treatment in this case isn’t mandatory.
I would absolutely be against mandatory medical treatment. But that’s not the truth here.
It’s the same old chestnut: people who wrongly think their freedoms are more important than everyone else’s freedoms. They are upset at the idea of being confined to their home when they have tuberculosis or covid or whatever. They don’t value the lives of the rest of their community and so they see themselves as victims.
The article is clear that this is about mandatory treatment:
“Sorenson ordered a civil warrant for her arrest, to be enforced on or after March 3, and again ordered her to jail to undergo involuntary testing and treatment until health officials deem it safe to release her.”
separate from the very long saga leading up to this, I generally share your concern about that. But that does not invalidate everything that came prior.
However, what’s the practical solution? What do you think they should do to protect the jail staff and population if she refuses treatment? Maybe we just drop her off on a deserted island?
Exaggeration aside, I’m truly curious. How do we protect everyone else’s freedom to be safe and secure from her without impinging upon hers?
This is often the point where people start bending reality rather than recognizing the hypocrisy of their beliefs. They’ll start to suggest that covid or tuberculosis isn’t actually that dangerous, or perhaps isn’t real at all, so we aren’t actually faced with this predicament.
I do not have, and have never taken, a position on the order.
You yourself have taken a stronger position in your prior comment: “I would absolutely be against mandatory medical treatment.” Does that mean you are now against this order, now that you are aware that it forces medical treatment?
Good question! I’m against mandatory medical treatment. But I’m also pragmatic and recognize that having a belief doesn’t mean that belief must be enforced at all costs.
Any predicament that boils down to “one of these parties’ freedoms needs to be impinged” demands flexibility of values. The world isn’t perfect like that.
If she refuses to cooperate and find a compromise (like staying away from people if she continues to be a risk to their lives), then regrettably, the least evil option is probably mandatory treatment. But I’m truly eager to find an alternative. Any alternative. As long as it isn’t “just let her hurt people.”
P.S. I appreciate this discussion. Please don’t think I’m coming after you— just the argument.
> I’m also pragmatic and recognize that having a belief doesn’t mean that belief must be enforced at all costs.
But you said two comments ago you were “absolutely” against forced medical treatment. This clearly has softened?
I bring this up not to dunk on you but to acknowledge a prior point you made which I think is a strong one: “people start bending reality rather than recognizing the hypocrisy of their beliefs”
I hasten to add I’m also not calling you a hypocrite! But I quote that, and in particular the “bending reality” part, because I think this goes both ways, not for just one party in a debate.
One lesson from me from Covid was that no one side in a debate has a monopoly on the practice of subordinating hard facts to emotion or prior belief and that we all have to bend over backwards to point out flawed reasoning even when it supports a position we are inclined to like. That was the whole point of my very first post in this thread.
I don't think OP was trying to preempt concern that it's government overreach to order her to seek treatment or self-isolate: very few people would seriously argue that the government can't require someone with an active case of tuberculosis to stay out of the supermarket.
Jailing her is what could be interpreted by a reasonable person as overreach, and for that concern the amount of notice she was given is absolutely relevant.
> very few people would seriously argue that the government can't require someone with an active case of tuberculosis to stay out of the supermarket.
The linked article seemed to me to clearly state if she goes to jail it’s to isolate and definitely also to get treated (“ordered her to jail to undergo involuntary testing and treatment until health officials deem it safe to release her”). Hence my focus on people who are against forced treatment - I don’t think notice and warning ameliorates their concerns at all.
One of the jobs of government is, in fact, to protect innocent people from the bad behavior of others. The government shouldn't force her to get treated, but the government can protect others from exposure to potentially lethal and costly disease because of her violation of public health directives.
This is not overreach, it's the exact right touch to restrict harm to the other individuals in the community.
Germ theory was also pretty new at the time and not something most working class people would know about, nor did Mary have symptoms.
Contrary to today, germ theory is taught in elementary schools and is well understood by basically everyone. And this woman was clearly experiencing symptoms bad enough to require an ER visit! Visiting the ER likely also means that most of the common religious reasons such as being a Christian Scientist are out the window.
At a certain point it becomes willful negligence and not ignorance.
The question isn't the immediacy, it's your right to choose. "Take these drugs, or else" is the choice being offered to her. Constitutionally speaking, one might argue she have an option to live her life unimpeded.
I don't disagree with the court's sentiment, she's absolutely a public health hazard. But I also don't think people should have a right to bear arms, freely insult others beyond the point of harassment etc, etc.
I mean that a lot of speech that goes to court and gets defended by the first amendment should possibly be actionable. There are plenty of extremists who walk this line but the Westboro Baptist Church are the first that come to my mind. There's also plenty of hypocrisy when applying these laws. A lot more brown people seem to get prosecuted for radicalisation than white "Christian" extremists.
IMO: It's okay to hold the opinion, it's okay to air the opinion, but picketing funeral processions? You're being a dick. Straight to jail.
I think that's a problem with freedoms in general is that there's no scope to measure people being a dick to people who aren't. The law should have leeway in both directions for outliers.
Just my take, anyway. It probably is worse than outright freedom but it might feel fairer for a few minutes.
I understand the need for protest, and I would defend most of it. But the last few years has also seen a lot of protests that go too far; people hiding under the skirt of protest when they're actually just there to riot, instigate violent confrontation.
Is it okay to superglue yourself to a road to protest oil? Is it okay to break shit, block or delay thousands of normal people to get a message across?
The law doesn't do "sometimes" very well, and people don't do "balanced and unbiased" very well. I'm not sure what's right.
The supreme court has said repeatedly that she has the right to refuse treatment but not the right to be free while doing so. They can force isolate her indefinitely until she’s not a public hazard.
She is a walking biohazard. If you want to be in society there is a minimal level of responsiblity, otherwise go to the forest and build a lean-to and live out the rest of your tb shortened life.
From another article: the person in question might be mentally disabled or otherwise incapable of understanding their infection[1]. It's otherwise hard to imagine why someone would walk around with an active (and not latent) tuberculosis infection for over a year.
Incarcerating someone is not an ideal outcome, but an understandable one in the presence of other pressures (like the absence of adequate mental health facilities). It would be interesting to see more reporting on those pressures.
> It's otherwise hard to imagine why someone would walk around with an active (and not latent) tuberculosis infection for over a year.
If 2020/2021 taught us anything, it's that millions of people are totally fine with denying, ignoring and spreading a deadly, infectious disease, and actively fight/protest measures to stop it.
COVID and tuberculosis are pretty different diseases: active tuberculosis infections kill roughly half of their hosts[1].
People can believe all kinds of pigheaded and ignorant things about COVID because, in parts, they (1) either deny it exists or (2) minimize its effects. Tuberculosis denialism or minimalization aren't similarly common, to my knowledge.
The point of that comment is that millions of people actively choose to ignore the entire concept of a health care system and the science underlying disease. Those people simply wouldn’t care about the differences between Covid and other diseases. They’re certainly not going to care about a WHO fact sheet.
Living in a place where the majority of people are COVID skeptics to varying degrees, I can assure you that almost none of them would deny that tuberculosis is deadly.
To listen to some of the people here, you would think that it's all-or-nothing: either you believe everything that comes out of the health care system or absolutely none of it. That's not accurate, and treating people that way doesn't help solve the problem.
Has it ever been otherwise? Everyone thinks they’ve done their due diligence and arrived at the correct conclusion.
The people who disagree are obviously wrong. And maybe they even know it.
> Everyone thinks they’ve done their due diligence and arrived at the correct conclusion.
I think this is too charitable. So many points of contention have both sides using morality as the justification for their position, and if they are on the side of "what is right" then there's no point even considering the words of the other side, because clearly the others are on the side of "wrong".
This is, of course, not an entirely new phenomenon. What is different is that we can communicate more, and faster, than in the past- one might hope that would help us more readily understand each other, but the opposite is proving to be true.
Disease denial wasn't invented with COVID, it's been around for as long as medical treatment has been, ranging from "I am not sick" to "Sure, I have it, but and I'm fine so your claims about it being a risk are BS" to the flat-out crackpot "germ theory is fake, wake up sheeple". COVID only showed exactly how many people are disappointments.
Most COVID skeptics are somewhere in between "deniers at all costs" and "mildly suspicious that the government's recommendations are politically motivated". As in any normal curve, the vast majority are in the latter end of the spectrum and would be very happy to accept that TB is deadly.
Tuberculosis is weird. The CDC estimates that 13M Americans have latent infections. Asymptomatic people are only tested in the US under special circumstances. As far as I know, no widespread surveillance or treatment program exists. And yet the actual burden of disease caused by TB in the US seems quite low.
As far as I know, no one really knows why TB is not a major problem in the US. But saying that half of active TB patients is a bit like saying that car accidents kill half of the people who are critically injured by a car accident — it may be true (although I made up that last statistic), but it rather overstates the severity of the underlying problem (TB and car accidents).
The TB vaccine (BCG) is barely used in the US. It is not on the CDC schedule, it’s not routinely given in any school I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t seem to be recommended for US-born people at all.
I find it surprising that the US even bothers giving it to green card recipients, given that the US has no particular shortage of people with TB infections that can potentially infect people domestically.
And the BCG vaccine isn’t even particularly effective.
I had the exact same thought. Prior to the pandemic, I would have agreed with OP. After the pandemic? Well, maybe “mentally disabled or otherwise incapable of understanding” is a good description of a huge percentage of the population.
I empathize with this on a personal safety level, but all available evidence about this person indicates that they're just mentally ill. They're not part of a community of tuberculosis truthers or something like that; they're someone infected with a very deadly disease and will likely die if they aren't forcefully given treatment.
Absolutely none of them had lockdowns. Some of them shut down various businesses and public spaces but aside from some curfews implemented in order to arrest BLM protesters no one was kept indoors.
Though everyone hoped it would, SARS-2 vaccination has been shown to confer only modest protection against infection and contagion.[0] And, lockdowns were ineffective due to the high contagious nature of this virus and the fact that they weren't really "lockdowns", just restriction of movement for a fraction of the population.
And 2022 through 2023. 26,555 Americans have died since the beginning of the year, many hundreds of thousands have gained Long Covid. Its not a historical event its one we are still living through and ever more people are fine with the death and disability risks and consequences on others.
What you've said here is both true and moving the goal post from your first claim while also ignoring the other fact: they were approved for emergency use which means they still were subjected to rigorous testing and trials.
They did not have least testing, they underwent parallel trial testing.
> They did not have least testing, they underwent parallel trial testing.
yes, let us quibble: not tested to the degree required for regular FDA approval as safe and effective, hence “Emergency Use Authorization”. I think maybe piling on the OP is unwarranted here.
IIRC in the UK the vaccines were touted by fact checkers as having “stopped hospitalisation and death from covid”, even though this was clearly not true from ONS data (yet more controversy abounds[1], predictably government statistics are intrinsically flawed because official agendas take precedence over reality[2]).
[2] "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” - R.P. Feynman, 1986, Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, vol 2, appendix F.
It is not unwarranted. They are spreading misinformation.
To assert vaccines were not tested, when they very much were, and then to move the goal post when I challenged him (and challenged the moved goal posts) is not quibbling. It is correcting.
He is just one of those people who will spread false information and try to bend standards and definitions even when sourced cited is the government they are covering for. His party can do no wrong. Useless to argue with.
Your comment amounts to dangerous misinformation. If you really believe what you've written, please provide high quality primary sources that show medicines were administered that were untested. Anything else is you spreading misinformation.
You've moved the goal post (again) but I'll address yet another false claim. Nothing was "violated". The vaccines were rigorously tested.
> An EUA can only be granted when no adequate, approved, available alternatives exist, and when the known and potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.
> It is the job of the FDA to ensure medical products meet rigorous safety and efficacy standards, a process that can take years for what’s called “full approval.” Though that timeline is condensed when an EUA is granted, the FDA still upholds its strict standards.
Additionally, your FDA source says nothing about untested medicines being administered. You've shown your original point was either poorly communicated or misinformed or nefarious. I'll be generous in my interpretation of your intentions and assume you're merely misinformed and communicating without clarity which leads me to say: if you're going to make an extraordinary claim you must provide extra ordinary evidence or you're spreading misinformation that could cause harm downstream.
If you're not sure, then just don't say anything or perhaps frame it as a question.
The vaccines have not been approved to this day. They are being used (and mandated) under an emergency authorization, because the testing has not been completed.
The UMMS article is full of half truths. It's a sales document, not a summary of the science (which is still highly ambiguous).
Nope. Authorized for emergency use only. Using the word "approved" is an error:
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is a monovalent COVID-19 vaccine that is authorized for emergency use to prevent COVID-19 as:
The first two doses of the three-dose primary series for children 6 months through 4 years of age.
A two-dose primary series for individuals 5 years of age and older.
A third primary series dose for individuals 5 years of age and older who have been determined to have certain kinds of immunocompromise.
> Comirnaty is a monovalent COVID-19 vaccine that is approved for use as a two-dose primary series for the prevention of COVID-19 in individuals 12 years of age and older.
OK, they are approved for the first two primary jabs. Comirnaty, and the bivalent version, are not yet approved for any booster jabs. Those are still under EUA.
And booster jabs are about all that has been happening for years. Same for Moderna.
Read the whole page, carefully. Both are fully approved. I do not understand how you can conclude that the word "approved" is an error when both vaccines were upgraded from EUA to fully approved, in the words of the FDA themselves.
In South Africa, where it's sadly still really common (especially "eXtensively Drug-Resistant" TB), people sell their treatment to drug dealers (who cook it into a recreational drug).
I have never understood why, and I still don't understand people's behavior during the pandemic.
> How you so casually downplay all this damage wrought on people like me is worse than, say, a white person saying slavery wasn't that bad to a black person (because millions of lives were actively fucked very recently by policy from people like you and all you can do is gloat). There's no type of people I despise more on this planet than those like you, and you're the only type of people I actively hate.
I was poised for an upvote until this paragraph. Maybe tone it down a little?
Some poeple's religious views keep them from getting medical treatment (Christian Science for example) in such cases they have to agree to no longer participate or be out in the public since she will be a disease vector at that point. No matter what her mental condition or religious background she has no right to roam around and infect others.
The previous discussion of this situation (link needed) had some discussion on typhoid Mary. That previous thread was actually where I learned about the story.
Sounds like there are some parallels. I'm not sure if it's the same in this case, but Mary Mallon was given a court order to give up her job as a cook, but that was the best paying job she could get, so lacking the financial resources necessary to survive without that job she returned to it.
I think the public policy lesson there is: you can't just tell people to stop doing things they have to do in order to exist. If it's necessary in rare cases to tell people to stop working, then it's up to the state to provide them the financial resources to survive.
Germ theory was also pretty new at the time and not something most working class people would know about, nor did Mary have symptoms.
Contrary to today, germ theory is taught in elementary schools and is well understood by basically everyone. And this woman was clearly experiencing symptoms bad enough to require an ER visit! Visiting the ER likely also means that most of the common religious reasons such as being a Christian Scientist are out the window.
The article mentions translators, so there's evidently some sort of language barrier, and probably a cultural one as well.
Even if she did fully understand that she's supposed to socially distance and observe a lot of very strict precautions to not infect anyone, it's not clear if she had the financial means to actually follow all those rules, which likely prevented her from working.
Highlights an edge case of informed consent (medical consent).
Basically, it's impossible to "internally give" consent when done under any sort of threat.
In other words, she may "express" consent, but not "internally give consent."
What does that mean? Probably, she'll get strongly supervised treatment and nothing untoward happens. But then what happens if she suffers a serious side effect of the treatment?
The government used to do everything it could to make executioners anonymous, so that friends/family of the aggrieved had no clear target for vengeance (whether civil or extrajudicial); and so society at large couldn’t recognize the executioner as “dishonourable” for being willing to perform such an act.
This edge-case could be pretty easily worked around by providing the same level of anonymity to doctors involved in state-ordered medical treatment. Can’t sue without a defendant!
I think you are misinterpreting the parent comment. The issue is not legal protection for doctors that administer state mandated treatments. She had the option in this case to self-isolate.
The issue is ethical, is it possible for a patient to give consent if it's given under threat (of incarceration or otherwise). I think medical consent as a concept has been weakened in the west this past decade, the first obvious example is Covid with people having to get vaccinated to have access to certain services and to keep their employment in some cases, the second example that struck me at the time are opt-out systems for organ donations.
No consent is needed if a noncompliant patient poses great harm to others.
The least harm to all is to force their treatment without their informed consent.
It's either that or keep paying for their total isolation until they die. Not treating a treatable fatal illness would be malpractice. If they wanted to kill themselves by some other means later, then that's a mental healthcare matter later.
To clarify... nope. In your instance the man gets your expression of consent, but very much does not have your internal consent.
I edited my post to clarify a bit more that informed consent is a specific term in medical ethics, and probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Thanks!
I was talking to a psychologist/counselor that works with one of the counties in the Bay Area. He said that top 10 most frequent people he sees costs the county well over $1 million per year, and the top person costs over $10 million. He said that about 30% of the people he works with need counseling but he also confirmed that there simply is a large percentage of people that he works with that need to be forced into treatment and he agreed with Michael Shellenberger's approach in the book "San Fransicko". He said even within the Bay Area, people bounce around between counties, and there is no system to keep track of them, and that also leads to a lot of wasted money.
This is a perfect case of how sometimes people need to be forced into treatment for their own good, and for the good of others.
The issue of government overreach is absurd in these extreme situations. This woman is brazenly ignoring public health, probably because of a mental health issue. There needs to be a way to declare some people as being unfit to care for themselves. I, for one, think that if you are so addicted to drugs and/or alcohol or are so mentally ill, that you drop unconscious on the sidewalk, you should be put into forced mental health care for at least 60 days or longer.
My only opinion on all this is I don’t trust any solution that does not acknowledge and address why we ended forced mental health carceral treatment in the first place. Chesterton’s Fence.
There was a “crisis” that caused that practice to end just as there is now a “crisis” bringing it back. If it’s brought back it should be done outside of this framework of panic.
> There needs to be a way to declare some people as being unfit to care for themselves.
There is in the law of each state; it varies from state to state. For obvious reasons, it's a pretty high bar to clear and usually requires an advocate for commitment to be dedicated to the cause to make sure that the involuntary commitment process goes all the way through to completion.
It also, even with the high bar, is frequently abused for various forms of exploitation. While it serves a clear need, its an extremely dangerous thing to have; it is very difficult (impossible, arguably) to safeguard removing a person's agency in a way which does not make it a vehicle for rather extreme abuses.
A practicing psychologist suggests people need to be forced into treatment? Well color me surprised! Next you'll be telling me the jail warden thinks those in jail need to be locked up!
Tuberculosis is such a huge society (capitalism?) failure story.
We had all the needed tool to eradicate it.
But we didn't.
Mainly because of organizational and monetary reasons.
Now this illness many have treated as "conquered" is coming back with more and more antibiotics resisted strands.
And this trend only gets accelerated due to many poor areas not being able to provide the needed treatment for many of the more vicious strands anymore as they don't have the kind of antibiotics necessary for it.
I wonder if 50 or so years in the future we have to have tuberculosis isolation centers again where we have to place patients with it again due to some extra bad fully antibiotic resistant strands which we can't treat anymore... would be horrible.
Perhaps unavoidable, but we shouldn't gloat about it either. In principle, people who are willing to tolerate certain kinds of risks from each other should be able to live in voluntary communities and those who unwilling should be able to stay away. With COVID millions would have taken the risks and millions of others would have gladly isolated until vaccines arrived, both groups were denied important agency to choose what they thought was the least bad option in a bad situation. Monkeypox and AIDS can be largely eradicated through serial monogamy/monoandry with testing before starting a new relationship, should we start arresting people who don't comply?
Your analogy is badly misguided. Having non-monogamous sex has a risk of getting/spreading HIV. Being around people has a risk of getting/spreading tuberculosis. Those are analogous.
The direct analogy in this case is criminal non-disclosure of HIV positivity to sexual partners. While you will find some disagreement about second order effects of laws against it, and it raises serious questions, there have been prosecutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_transmission_of_HIV.
Sure, and we shouldn't gloat about either case. Ideally should be vaccines and treatments for HIV, so that someone who had too much to drink and had sex without discussing their medical history could be treated like a jerk rather than a full criminal. It could be that we can think of no other way to safeguard ourselves, but we should keep thinking how we can respect everyone preferences. Maybe HIV positive bars where everyone understands issues from the start.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 213 ms ] threadFrom the article:
> But, the department seemed to reach a breaking point this January. In addition to the woman's defiance hitting the one-year mark, on January 11 she was involved in a car accident as a passenger. The incident clearly showed the woman was violating her self-isolation order, which put the driver at risk of infection. Additionally, the woman went to the emergency department a day later complaining of chest pain and did not tell doctors about her active tuberculosis case, putting them and other hospital staff at risk. When they did lung X-rays, they initially suspected she had cancer. But in fact, the images showed that her tuberculosis case was worsening.
Ordering her isolation and treatment is well within the historical powers of governments.
If you believe something is a right, giving more notice before abrogating it does not factor into whether it is a rights violation.
Everything I’ve said here, by the way, is true regardless of your position on the court’s action (on which I’ve stated no position). If people believe (six people here and counting, and I’m not saying you’re one of them) that they need to downvote a basic factual observation because it vaguely seems to contradict their opinions, maybe they should examine why they so lack confidence in their opinions.
The notice is relevant because it’s indicative of due process and an attempt to respect her individual rights and balance it with the public good, which she has repeatedly ignored and results in the escalation to the rightful isolation.
Ignoring all details and focusing on just the end result as if that’s all that matters leads to foolish ignorance.
Furthermore, they didn’t order her to get medical treatment. They ordered her to stay away from potential victims if she didn’t get treated.
A “massive difference” in many contexts but not for those who oppose mandatory medical treatment.
Who else would possibly argue that this is government overreach than people with that belief?
I would absolutely be against mandatory medical treatment. But that’s not the truth here.
It’s the same old chestnut: people who wrongly think their freedoms are more important than everyone else’s freedoms. They are upset at the idea of being confined to their home when they have tuberculosis or covid or whatever. They don’t value the lives of the rest of their community and so they see themselves as victims.
“Sorenson ordered a civil warrant for her arrest, to be enforced on or after March 3, and again ordered her to jail to undergo involuntary testing and treatment until health officials deem it safe to release her.”
However, what’s the practical solution? What do you think they should do to protect the jail staff and population if she refuses treatment? Maybe we just drop her off on a deserted island?
Exaggeration aside, I’m truly curious. How do we protect everyone else’s freedom to be safe and secure from her without impinging upon hers?
This is often the point where people start bending reality rather than recognizing the hypocrisy of their beliefs. They’ll start to suggest that covid or tuberculosis isn’t actually that dangerous, or perhaps isn’t real at all, so we aren’t actually faced with this predicament.
You yourself have taken a stronger position in your prior comment: “I would absolutely be against mandatory medical treatment.” Does that mean you are now against this order, now that you are aware that it forces medical treatment?
Any predicament that boils down to “one of these parties’ freedoms needs to be impinged” demands flexibility of values. The world isn’t perfect like that.
If she refuses to cooperate and find a compromise (like staying away from people if she continues to be a risk to their lives), then regrettably, the least evil option is probably mandatory treatment. But I’m truly eager to find an alternative. Any alternative. As long as it isn’t “just let her hurt people.”
P.S. I appreciate this discussion. Please don’t think I’m coming after you— just the argument.
But you said two comments ago you were “absolutely” against forced medical treatment. This clearly has softened?
I bring this up not to dunk on you but to acknowledge a prior point you made which I think is a strong one: “people start bending reality rather than recognizing the hypocrisy of their beliefs”
I hasten to add I’m also not calling you a hypocrite! But I quote that, and in particular the “bending reality” part, because I think this goes both ways, not for just one party in a debate.
One lesson from me from Covid was that no one side in a debate has a monopoly on the practice of subordinating hard facts to emotion or prior belief and that we all have to bend over backwards to point out flawed reasoning even when it supports a position we are inclined to like. That was the whole point of my very first post in this thread.
Whatever word communicates, “only when there is no less evil alternative.”
Jailing her is what could be interpreted by a reasonable person as overreach, and for that concern the amount of notice she was given is absolutely relevant.
The linked article seemed to me to clearly state if she goes to jail it’s to isolate and definitely also to get treated (“ordered her to jail to undergo involuntary testing and treatment until health officials deem it safe to release her”). Hence my focus on people who are against forced treatment - I don’t think notice and warning ameliorates their concerns at all.
This is not overreach, it's the exact right touch to restrict harm to the other individuals in the community.
I can't help to wonder if it's a modern spin of Typhoid Mary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon).
Contrary to today, germ theory is taught in elementary schools and is well understood by basically everyone. And this woman was clearly experiencing symptoms bad enough to require an ER visit! Visiting the ER likely also means that most of the common religious reasons such as being a Christian Scientist are out the window.
At a certain point it becomes willful negligence and not ignorance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoniazid#Side_effects
I don't disagree with the court's sentiment, she's absolutely a public health hazard. But I also don't think people should have a right to bear arms, freely insult others beyond the point of harassment etc, etc.
What do you mean by this?
IMO: It's okay to hold the opinion, it's okay to air the opinion, but picketing funeral processions? You're being a dick. Straight to jail.
I think that's a problem with freedoms in general is that there's no scope to measure people being a dick to people who aren't. The law should have leeway in both directions for outliers.
Just my take, anyway. It probably is worse than outright freedom but it might feel fairer for a few minutes.
But what about protest? I don't know.
I understand the need for protest, and I would defend most of it. But the last few years has also seen a lot of protests that go too far; people hiding under the skirt of protest when they're actually just there to riot, instigate violent confrontation.
Is it okay to superglue yourself to a road to protest oil? Is it okay to break shit, block or delay thousands of normal people to get a message across?
The law doesn't do "sometimes" very well, and people don't do "balanced and unbiased" very well. I'm not sure what's right.
Incarcerating someone is not an ideal outcome, but an understandable one in the presence of other pressures (like the absence of adequate mental health facilities). It would be interesting to see more reporting on those pressures.
[1]: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article272657405.h...
If 2020/2021 taught us anything, it's that millions of people are totally fine with denying, ignoring and spreading a deadly, infectious disease, and actively fight/protest measures to stop it.
People can believe all kinds of pigheaded and ignorant things about COVID because, in parts, they (1) either deny it exists or (2) minimize its effects. Tuberculosis denialism or minimalization aren't similarly common, to my knowledge.
[1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...
To listen to some of the people here, you would think that it's all-or-nothing: either you believe everything that comes out of the health care system or absolutely none of it. That's not accurate, and treating people that way doesn't help solve the problem.
I think this is too charitable. So many points of contention have both sides using morality as the justification for their position, and if they are on the side of "what is right" then there's no point even considering the words of the other side, because clearly the others are on the side of "wrong".
This is, of course, not an entirely new phenomenon. What is different is that we can communicate more, and faster, than in the past- one might hope that would help us more readily understand each other, but the opposite is proving to be true.
Most COVID skeptics are somewhere in between "deniers at all costs" and "mildly suspicious that the government's recommendations are politically motivated". As in any normal curve, the vast majority are in the latter end of the spectrum and would be very happy to accept that TB is deadly.
As far as I know, no one really knows why TB is not a major problem in the US. But saying that half of active TB patients is a bit like saying that car accidents kill half of the people who are critically injured by a car accident — it may be true (although I made up that last statistic), but it rather overstates the severity of the underlying problem (TB and car accidents).
Could it be the mandatory vaccination programme? I even had to get a booster as condition for my greencard because it had been 10 years.
The TB vaccine (BCG) is barely used in the US. It is not on the CDC schedule, it’s not routinely given in any school I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t seem to be recommended for US-born people at all.
I find it surprising that the US even bothers giving it to green card recipients, given that the US has no particular shortage of people with TB infections that can potentially infect people domestically.
And the BCG vaccine isn’t even particularly effective.
that is BONKERS I've gotta read up on this more.
In US in particular different states implement radically different lockdown policies.
Now we see that states that implemented lightest policies did just fine.
[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v...
Do you have some citations that show this to be widely true?
Simply because it was (Oct 2023) way leas than 55% effective and still falling.
Citation needed. COVID vaccines certainly weren't tested for as long as others, but they were tested on quite a few participants before being administered to everyone: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccines-clinic...
Historically, these vaccines had least testing and wider deployment than any other medicine.
What you've said here is both true and moving the goal post from your first claim while also ignoring the other fact: they were approved for emergency use which means they still were subjected to rigorous testing and trials.
They did not have least testing, they underwent parallel trial testing.
yes, let us quibble: not tested to the degree required for regular FDA approval as safe and effective, hence “Emergency Use Authorization”. I think maybe piling on the OP is unwarranted here.
IIRC in the UK the vaccines were touted by fact checkers as having “stopped hospitalisation and death from covid”, even though this was clearly not true from ONS data (yet more controversy abounds[1], predictably government statistics are intrinsically flawed because official agendas take precedence over reality[2]).
[1] https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com
[2] "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” - R.P. Feynman, 1986, Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, vol 2, appendix F.
To assert vaccines were not tested, when they very much were, and then to move the goal post when I challenged him (and challenged the moved goal posts) is not quibbling. It is correcting.
Perhaps government troll.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...
https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/covid-vaccine/facts/testing
Your comment amounts to dangerous misinformation. If you really believe what you've written, please provide high quality primary sources that show medicines were administered that were untested. Anything else is you spreading misinformation.
My source is FDA:
Vaccine was approved on August 23, 2021, but was used since December 11, 2020.
In other words most people in US received first dose until it was fully tested.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...
It is true that is a weaker standard than "FDA Approved" but it is still a high standard and certainly not "no testing".
Notice I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just what the facts are.
> An EUA can only be granted when no adequate, approved, available alternatives exist, and when the known and potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.
> It is the job of the FDA to ensure medical products meet rigorous safety and efficacy standards, a process that can take years for what’s called “full approval.” Though that timeline is condensed when an EUA is granted, the FDA still upholds its strict standards.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/what-does-eua-mean
If you're not sure, then just don't say anything or perhaps frame it as a question.
The UMMS article is full of half truths. It's a sales document, not a summary of the science (which is still highly ambiguous).
> On January 31, 2022, the FDA announced the second approval of a COVID-19 vaccine.
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
> On August 23, 2021, FDA announced the first approval of a COVID-19 vaccine.
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is a monovalent COVID-19 vaccine that is authorized for emergency use to prevent COVID-19 as:
> Comirnaty is a monovalent COVID-19 vaccine that is approved for use as a two-dose primary series for the prevention of COVID-19 in individuals 12 years of age and older.
And booster jabs are about all that has been happening for years. Same for Moderna.
BTW, this conversation thread is flagged and dead, so no one sees it. And, I'm not going to vouch for the root, because it really is off-topic.
I have never understood why, and I still don't understand people's behavior during the pandemic.
What could it be besides the money?
I was poised for an upvote until this paragraph. Maybe tone it down a little?
You have the same (if not more) risks but have lost your personal liberty to boot.
The social contract has always been a balancing act between the most benefit for the most people, and the ability to enjoy life as you see fit.
I find it disheartening how "cool" it has become in recent times to attack the fundamental concept of liberty.
It's like, folks feel like it's ok to reverse hundreds of years of progress on liberalism just as long as it's their tribe that's in charge.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
I think the public policy lesson there is: you can't just tell people to stop doing things they have to do in order to exist. If it's necessary in rare cases to tell people to stop working, then it's up to the state to provide them the financial resources to survive.
Contrary to today, germ theory is taught in elementary schools and is well understood by basically everyone. And this woman was clearly experiencing symptoms bad enough to require an ER visit! Visiting the ER likely also means that most of the common religious reasons such as being a Christian Scientist are out the window.
Even if she did fully understand that she's supposed to socially distance and observe a lot of very strict precautions to not infect anyone, it's not clear if she had the financial means to actually follow all those rules, which likely prevented her from working.
Basically, it's impossible to "internally give" consent when done under any sort of threat.
In other words, she may "express" consent, but not "internally give consent."
What does that mean? Probably, she'll get strongly supervised treatment and nothing untoward happens. But then what happens if she suffers a serious side effect of the treatment?
This edge-case could be pretty easily worked around by providing the same level of anonymity to doctors involved in state-ordered medical treatment. Can’t sue without a defendant!
The issue is ethical, is it possible for a patient to give consent if it's given under threat (of incarceration or otherwise). I think medical consent as a concept has been weakened in the west this past decade, the first obvious example is Covid with people having to get vaccinated to have access to certain services and to keep their employment in some cases, the second example that struck me at the time are opt-out systems for organ donations.
The least harm to all is to force their treatment without their informed consent.
It's either that or keep paying for their total isolation until they die. Not treating a treatable fatal illness would be malpractice. If they wanted to kill themselves by some other means later, then that's a mental healthcare matter later.
In this case I'm 100% okay taking the money either way. The threat is immaterial to my internal consent.
I edited my post to clarify a bit more that informed consent is a specific term in medical ethics, and probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Thanks!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430827/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent
Compulsory quarantine and isolation is allowed by federal law.
https://www.hhs.gov/answers/public-health-and-safety/what-di...
This is a perfect case of how sometimes people need to be forced into treatment for their own good, and for the good of others.
The issue of government overreach is absurd in these extreme situations. This woman is brazenly ignoring public health, probably because of a mental health issue. There needs to be a way to declare some people as being unfit to care for themselves. I, for one, think that if you are so addicted to drugs and/or alcohol or are so mentally ill, that you drop unconscious on the sidewalk, you should be put into forced mental health care for at least 60 days or longer.
Yes there were issues, but a lot of those were due to under-funding.
Not to mention the community support that was supposed to replace institutionalisation never materialised.
There was a “crisis” that caused that practice to end just as there is now a “crisis” bringing it back. If it’s brought back it should be done outside of this framework of panic.
There is in the law of each state; it varies from state to state. For obvious reasons, it's a pretty high bar to clear and usually requires an advocate for commitment to be dedicated to the cause to make sure that the involuntary commitment process goes all the way through to completion.
We had all the needed tool to eradicate it.
But we didn't.
Mainly because of organizational and monetary reasons.
Now this illness many have treated as "conquered" is coming back with more and more antibiotics resisted strands.
And this trend only gets accelerated due to many poor areas not being able to provide the needed treatment for many of the more vicious strands anymore as they don't have the kind of antibiotics necessary for it.
I wonder if 50 or so years in the future we have to have tuberculosis isolation centers again where we have to place patients with it again due to some extra bad fully antibiotic resistant strands which we can't treat anymore... would be horrible.
The direct analogy in this case is criminal non-disclosure of HIV positivity to sexual partners. While you will find some disagreement about second order effects of laws against it, and it raises serious questions, there have been prosecutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_transmission_of_HIV.