President Signs Executive Order to Quarantine SARS Patients

[quade 4]

ABC News just moved a headline on a developing story saying that the President has signed an Executive Order to quarantine SARS patients.

This EO has not yet been posted on whitehouse.gov, but I'll supply a link as soon as it appears.

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[jlmiracle 7]

Is there a list of the 28 states that have confirmed SARS?

Judy

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

[quade 4]

Below is a part of the transcript from today's press briefing. Check out the time and check out the time right NOW. Absolutely no hint whatsoever, that there was even an EO in the works.

Quote

Q Ari, has the President been briefed on the SARS virus, and is he worried about it developing into a plague?

MR. FLEISCHER: On which?

Q The SARS virus.

MR. FLEISCHER: Yes, the President has been monitoring events involving that. He's received reports about it. He continues to be concerned with it. Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson has been leading a group involving the Centers for Disease Control that has been working with the World Health Organization and other groups on the medical protection necessary to combat the disease, as well as working with Chinese authorities, authorities in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Q Thank you.

MR. FLEISCHER: Thank you.

END 12:59 P.M. EST

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[quade 4]

CDC SARS info HERE.

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[Deuce 1]

Ok, with the limited facts available, I think this is a good idea.

Misuse of antibiotics have resulted in some fierce bug-based diseases.

If it's a viral disease, then containment seems even more critical.

We humans haven't endured a plague in a very long time, and there's some thinking that we're overdue. Having gotten to my age in a world fairly free of the diseases that decimated my parents generation, with TB, Hepatitis and the deaths due to infections prior to the widespread availability of antibiotics common in that era, we may have gotten lax about the seriousness of disease.

I'm interested in thinking about the quarantine thing. Quarantine is equivalent to jail. Loss of liberty, and you didn't do anything wrong but get exposed to a contagion.

Scary.

[quade 4]

CNN now posting this as a breaking news story.

Quote

President Bush issues executive order adding SARS to list of communicable diseases for which a person can be quarantined.

Which is a little less scary.

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[Deuce 1]

Yeah, it's viral, and airborne. Thanks for the link, Q.

I'm all for quarantine.

[jlmiracle 7]

Thank you Paul.

Judy

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

[quade 4]

Quote

I'm all for quarantine.

I -think- I am too, but we all might want to check what the CDC is recommending before we make our decisions.

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[quade 4]

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Living/reuters20030404_518.html

Here's the full Reuters story -- note the phrase "apprehension, detention or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of suspected communicable diseases".

Quote

— WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush issued an executive order on Friday allowing the forced quarantine of patients with a mysterious new illness that has killed 80 people, as well as patients with other diseases such as Ebola.

The order allows the Health and Human Services secretary to decide when such a quarantine is needed.

It calls for the "apprehension, detention or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of suspected communicable diseases."

It names Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has affected a suspected 115 people in the United States and 2,400 worldwide, killing around 80.

The order also names cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Lassa and Marburg.

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[Deuce 1]

Quote

before we make our decisions

Well, as Californians, I think this decision gets to be made by Gray Davis.

Methinks it will be made on the behalf of the biggest campaign contributor.

[quade 4]

I meant whether we're fer it or agin it.

Clearly the intention is good, but when you consider how many people went to the Thailand Boogie and have been roaming the streets for a couple of weeks now . . . think about it.

Remember, people that have the disese get put in "isolation".

If you've only been exposed or are thought to have been exposed, then "quarantine" could be used.

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[Deuce 1]

Oh, then I'm "fer" it. Definitely.

If there wasn't a war on, this would be all we'd be talking about. I'm interested in this topic, but I know just enough about it to know I don't know much.

But so far, the viral diseases that are super deadly have been ones that can't survive long outside a host. Apparently this SARS virus can live about 3 hours outside a host. So if somebody sneezes in a bathroom, leaves, you wash your hands and then touch some of their sneeze 'droplets' and then rub your eyes, BLAMMO, you get to find out how tough your immune system is.

Any data on how many casualties this thing has caused in asia?

[quade 4]

Quote

Any data on how many casualties this thing has caused in asia?

Again, I think the CDC web site will have the best information on that as well as other questions. Check out the news sections.

Here's the latest figures as of April 2;

Quote

As of April 2, 2003, a total of 2,223 suspected and/or probable SARS cases have been reported to WHO from 16 countries, including the United States (3,4). The reported SARS cases include 78 deaths (case-fatality proportion: 3.5%). This report summarizes SARS cases among U.S. residents and surveillance and prevention activities in the United States.

Descriptive Epidemiology

As of April 2, CDC had received 100 reports of suspected SARS cases (Figure) from 28 states; 81 (81%) cases occurred among adults (Table). Of these 100 suspected cases, 94 (94%) persons had traveled within the 10 days before illness onset to the areas listed in the case definition (revised on March 29 to include all of mainland China as an area with documented or suspected community transmission), four had household contact with a person with suspected SARS, and two were health-care workers (HCWs) who provided medical care to a patient with suspected SARS. Manifestations of SARS have been relatively less severe among patients in the United States than among those reported elsewhere. A majority of U.S. patients had normal chest radiographs, and 23 (23%) were reported to have pneumonia or respiratory distress syndrome on chest radiograph, thereby meeting the WHO case definition of a probable case (4). As of April 2, of the 40 (40%) patients who were hospitalized for >24 hours, 13 (33%) remained hospitalized; one patient had required mechanical ventilatory support, and no deaths have been reported.

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[billvon 3,116]

> So if somebody sneezes in a bathroom, leaves, you wash your
> hands and then touch some of their sneeze 'droplets' and then rub
> your eyes, BLAMMO, you get to find out how tough your immune
> system is.

Yep. It's amazing the impact that just washing your hands has on disease spread. One of the biggest vectors in bathrooms is the bathroom door handle - many people touch it, often with wet hands, and that's an ideal environment for pathogens to loiter for a while. And since most people wash their hands before they touch the door handle, often even washing doesn't help.

[PhillyKev 0]

I vaguely remember an article I read about a study the army did. They had a group going through boot camp wash their hands 3-5 times per day. The number of people who got sick in general was reduced significantly as compared to normal.

Yesterday I read a pretty good article about the source of this disease. It seems that farmers in China are still living in midevil like conditions. They also frequently have ducks, chickens, and pigs all massed together in common areas. Apparently the ducks are great breeders of new and rare virus and then pass it along to the pigs which are adept at mutating it and passing it along to humans. These farmers then go sell their wares in the cities near the airports and BAMMO...worldwide epidemic. A hundred years ago it would be limited to the population in the general area but air travel has changed all that.

[AndyMan 7]

I find it interesting that

a: there isn't a standing law in place allowing for this already

and b: that it is expressed in such frightening terms, such as "apprehension, dentension", etc. It sounds disturbingly like 'The Stand'.

It's interesting to compare it to Ontario, which effectively did a similar thing last week, only they have a standing law in effect that only requires a disease to be labeled communicable and dangerous by the minister of health, but only applies if people are unwilling to quarantine themselves at home.

Once a diseased is labelled communicable and dangerous, those who have it can only be confined if they refuse to stay home.

It's odd, that a country that values its liberties as much as the US does, would be so quick to go to an extreme position. Are there documented cases of SARS in the US yet?

_Am

__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.