Envisioning a 21st-Century Quarantine

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/thrive/2005/oct/10/101005585.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Quarantine - or some version of it - in a 21st-century flu pandemic would look very different from the medieval stereotype of diseased outcasts locked in a do-not-enter zone.

President Bush's specter of a military-enforced mass quarantine is prompting debate of the Q-word as health officials update the nation's plan for battling a pandemic - a plan expected to define who decides when and how to separate the contagious from everyone else.

"All the options need to be on the table," said Dr. Marty Cetron, head of quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bush's comments recall how quarantines were enforced in parts of this country in the 1890s, when armed guards patrolled streets to keep victims of smallpox and other dread diseases confined to their homes.

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[nadinbrzezinski]

1. in the 21st century the model will or should

look closer to what they did for SARS in Toronto... which does nto give the oportunity for george to use the army, poor george..