May 272011
Short form: Utah has recently seen an outbreak of equine herpes, which is fatal for horses, but not transferable to humans. As a consequence, there has been a lot of quarantining going on, and a lot of horse-based events and gatherings have been cancelled (note to AIDS activists: had y’all realized that quarantining the infected is a good way to slow or stop the spread of a disease, AIDS would be a distant memory by now. Good job, dumbasses). And so, we get to the Davis County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest.
There’s a video. It’s…kinda sad.
6 Responses to “No Part Of This Headline Is Good”
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You’re right: nothing good about it.
About ten years ago I asked a card-carrying lesbian who was active in that world about quarantining HIV+ folk. The response was that it would a violation of their civil rights. What did she think about the fact that TB victims were quarantined? That was fine, she said. Why? Because she didn’t have TB or know anyone with it.
Interestingly, most people (see Note) who want a small, constitutionally-limited government would not have a problem with a major governmental response to a deadly epidemic. After all, this *would* be within the scope of the governments charter, in terms of “providing for the common defense.” Whether it’s Ebola, AIDS, super-flu, zombi-ism, smallpox or whatever, a disease that breaks out pandemic fashion would be beyond the ability of individual people to control effectively, and thus a forced quarantine of the infected in the early stages would be a proper response. Especially when it’s a viral disease. In the movies, there are basically two options:
1) It’s apocalyptic, and the development of a cure is either impossible or too late
2) The doctors produce a cure Just In Time.
Realistically, a viral epidemic will almost certainly result in End #1. All the years and billions of dollars spent working on a cure for AIDS and the common cold have produced precisely *squat* in terms of an acknowledged cure. A vaccine might be made in time to save a sizable chunk of the species, but AIDS has so far eluded a vaccine. Smallpox was eradicated witha vaccine… but most people alive today no long have any resistance, and if smallpox breaks out again, there’ll be interestingly bad times ahead.
Note: this does not include the nutburgers who think that vaccines cause autism and suchforth.
>About ten years ago I asked a card-carrying lesbian who was active in that world about quarantining HIV+ folk. The response was that it would a violation of their civil rights. What did she think about the fact that TB victims were quarantined? That was fine, she said. Why? Because she didn’t have TB or know anyone with it.
Now can you see why the statement below, taken from a comment to a previous post, makes a lot of sense to a lot of people?……….
>”More power for the government, because the people don’t understand what their best interests are; we do, because we and our friends are the best and the brightest and the most enlightened, so we deserve to govern.”
America: land of opportunity
Well, I wrote that … and the flaw in that argument is that a quarantine would apply to everyone, and would be applied on the basis of objective criteria rather than according to who you know.
We recently had an analogous situation affect the economy. If you look at who got the bailout money when the Obama administration “saved” General Motors, the United Auto Workers illegally got precedence and preference in receiving bailout money and GM’s creditors got screwed.
HIV is not believed to be transmitted by causal contact. Conservatives observe that avoiding certain behaviors (promiscuous sex and IV drug use, that conservatives disapprove of anyway) can prevent the infection. “Liberals” would rather pretend that people can continue such behaviors consequence free, and find the conservative suggestion an affront to their “civil rights”, as if it were a proposal to lock away the innocent.