WASHINGTON — Six counties in the San Francisco metro area made headlines when they announced Monday they were ordering all their residents to “shelter in place” in response to the novel coronavirus.

The sweeping proclamation is the most striking example to date of state and local governments in the United States taking sweeping action to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus and to limit the impact of the disease it causes, Covid-19. While the Bay Area is the first region in the U.S. to issue such an order, a number of states have mandated school and business closures and vastly curtailed nearly all major events.

Stricter lockdowns could follow in other states and localities. The federal government, too, is at least considering the idea. The Trump administration on Monday stopped short of any new requirements or restrictions but nonetheless urged all Americans not to travel and to limit gatherings to fewer than 10 people.

Asked whether he’d impose domestic travel restrictions on Monday, President Trump said they are “certainly something that we talk about every day. We haven’t made that decision.”

San Francisco’s order follows similar “lockdowns” in China and Italy, where the outbreaks began earlier and have so far been more severe. In San Francisco, at least, there are important exceptions: Residents will still be permitted to travel to buy food, see a doctor, and help care for family. Visitors to the region will be permitted to go home, too. Residents can even take part in outdoor activities, like walking or hiking, so long as they keep at least 6 feet of distance between themselves and others.

STAT took a closer look at what these policies are, what they do for the spread of disease, who has the power to issue them, and whether experts consider them constitutional or ethical.

What’s happening in the U.S. right now? Are we under a quarantine?

Officially, the definition of “quarantine” is very specific: It’s the seclusion of a person potentially exposed to a disease for a period of time to see if they become infected. A person under quarantine typically stays in one place to avoid nearly all contact with the outside world. When such a quarantine is ordered by the government, it’s illegal to violate them: Breaking a federal quarantine is punishable by a fine or imprisonment, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An individual found violating a federal quarantine order could face a fine of up to $100,000, a year in jail, or both, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

Many states also have their own punishments for violating quarantine, though they vary widely.

But many people talk about “quarantines” more broadly — referring to the city-wide lockdowns that force people to stay in their homes and cut off all travel to and from an impacted area. Legal experts often call this strategy of locking down an entire region “cordon sanitaire” — a term that dates back roughly 200 years when a French duke deployed troops along the Spanish border to contain the spread of infectious disease.

The correct term for what is going on in many places in America is social distancing — though the six counties in San Francisco test the limits of that term.

In most places right now, social distancing is suggested or recommended — Trump administration officials, for example, urged people across the country not to attend gatherings of more than 10 people. Other localities have looser recommendations: The governor of Utah, for example, has recommended banning gatherings of more than 100 people.

In some places, social distancing is mandatory. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker banned gatherings of more than 25 people and forced restaurants to close to diners. (They can still serve takeout.) It’s not immediately clear what penalties anyone violating the order would face.

The governors of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey announced on Monday they were limiting gatherings to 50 people and also mandated restaurants close, except for takeout. Laws governing quarantine in these three states are also vague on potential penalties, or even whether the same penalties would apply in these cases. Connecticut’s law states that anyone found violating a quarantine order can be fined up to $1,000 or imprisoned for up to a year. New Jersey’s law is comically antiquated: It says anyone found violating a quarantine order “shall be liable to a penalty of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars for each offense.”

Why encourage social distancing? Why do a lockdown?

Social distancing is seen as the most effective way to slow the infection rate for Covid-19 here in the United States. Public health experts have emphasized that efforts to flatten the curve — or to spread the rate of new infections out over time — will help ensure that America’s health care system is not rapidly overwhelmed with new Covid-19 infections.

Public health officials, however, are much less sure about the impact of a lockdown. Lockdowns by other countries, namely China, were quickly panned by public health experts as ineffective and unethical. Since those early days, however, top public health officials, including the head of the World Health Organization, have praised that same lockdown for helping to slow the spread of the disease.

Other public health experts insist, however, that lockdowns push people toward evasion, and that social distancing measures only work when governments have the public’s trust.

“Our historical experience with mandatory quarantines and mass quarantines and cordons is just not good, it’s not effective,” said Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, before the news of the Bay Area lockdown. “I do not see the need for it.”

What does lockdown look like in Italy and in China?

Other countries, like Italy and China, have mandated widespread lockdowns of whole cities, which not only prevent citizens from attending public gatherings, but also keep citizens from leaving the city, and even their homes.

China was the first country to implement such a lockdown in response to the novel coronavirus.

On Jan. 22, Chinese officials announced they were locking down the city of Wuhan, then the center of the coronavirus outbreak. All residents of Wuhan were ordered to stay in their homes and all transit within and out of the city was shut down. Within hours, photos emerged, showing a city of more than 11 million virtually deserted.

Restrictions only increased from there: Residents of Wuhan now are subject to temperature checks by police and forced isolation of sick residents in the region’s makeshift hospitals.

It’s not immediately clear what punishments those who violate the quarantine order face, although a top government official has been quoted saying anyone caught hiding their disease will be “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame.” There have also been press reports of arrests.

Italy first announced a lockdown of “hot zones” in the country’s north on March 8. Under the decree, all businesses, with the exception of grocery stores and pharmacies, were ordered closed. Residents of the cities were banned from travel within and out of the city without a permit, though there have been press reports that permits are widely available online. Violation of the order is punishable by up to three months in jail, according to the New York Times.

The travel restrictions appeared to be the most jarring for Italians: The news prompted swarms of Italians to flee on the last trains and buses leaving the region.

The county’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, extended that lockdown order to the entire country last week. Nearly all businesses across the country are now shuttered and nearly all travel outside one’s home must be justified.

Beginning midday today, France will also be on a widespread lockdown for the next 15 days. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who announced the restrictions late Monday, only said that violators of the order will be punished.

Could that happen in the U.S.? If so, would local, state, or federal officials issue the decision?

America’s system of responding to public health emergencies is notoriously fragmented, and decisions on whether to implement social distancing or quarantine measures are split between federal, state and roughly 2,800 local public health departments.

There’s hardly any standardization: 27% of states delegate this power solely to state authorities, 18% of states provide some power to local governments, and the remaining 55% delegate the powers to some combination of both, according to a recent study in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

There are a few exceptions, however. When travelers come in from abroad, the decision for an individual quarantine rests solely with the federal government. There’s also debate among legal scholars as to whether the federal government has the power to step in and overrule state and local governments’ quarantine decisions if need be.

Already there’s been calls for the federal government to do just that.

“The variation from one location to another could … make an epidemic worse as each state makes its own rules, looks out for its own interests, and relies on its own resources,” wrote Polly Price, a professor of law and global health at Emory University in a recent op-ed, where she called for the CDC to step in and set a national quarantine policy.

Is what the U.S. is doing constitutional?

Mandatory social distancing measures are constitutional, according to multiple constitutional scholars STAT spoke to. But large-scale lockdown policies may not be, they said. But U.S. courts are not used to dealing with these sorts of cases, and no one truly knows how a judge might rule.

“The good news [is] there are a number of cases on public health needs, the constitution, and the so-called state ‘police power.’ The bad news is they are quite old, mostly turn of the 20th century, and a huge amount of constitutional law has changed since then. As a result, there is a lot that is vague and uncertain in this area,” said Glenn Cohen, the faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Lawrence Gostin, the faculty director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, argued that America’s complicated federalist system might be the best check on any attempt to institute a mass quarantine or lockdown.

Neither federal nor state governments have clear authority, he argued, to restrict travel between states, thus making it difficult to justify any sort of domestic travel restriction in court.

Cohen predicted that in most cases the government would be required to show any quarantine order advances a “compelling government interest” and then prove that the government action was narrowly tailored to meet that goal. That’s where orders might get caught up in court: If quarantines or lockdowns are seen by judges as unnecessarily broad, they could be struck down.

So far, constitutional experts aren’t all together concerned, however, with most of the social distancing measures being rolled out in the U.S. In fact, the issues raised by social distancing aren’t as novel as they may seem.

“Health departments have broad powers to close facilities that pose a danger like a food source or restaurant that’s contaminated or unsanitary conditions. Same principle applies,” wrote Gostin in an email before the Bay Area announcement.

The Bay Area announcement, however, is already raising alarm bells for legal scholars.

“I think the [San Francisco] order will be challenged in court,” Gostin wrote in an email following the announcement. “I also don’t see how it will be possible to enforce such a sweeping order.”

Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/mass-quarantine-lockdown-explainer/

The post Explaining a mass quarantine: What does it mean to ‘shelter in place’? And who has the power to call for it? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The History of Pandemics

Pan·dem·ic /panˈdemik/ (of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.

As humans have spread across the world, so have infectious diseases. Even in this modern era, outbreaks are nearly constant, though not every outbreak reaches pandemic level as the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has.

Today’s visualization outlines some of history’s most deadly pandemics, from the Antonine Plague to the current COVID-19 event.

A Timeline of Historical Pandemics

Disease and illnesses have plagued humanity since the earliest days, our mortal flaw. However, it was not until the marked shift to agrarian communities that the scale and spread of these diseases increased dramatically.

Widespread trade created new opportunities for human and animal interactions that sped up such epidemics. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, smallpox, and others first appeared during these early years.

The more civilized humans became – with larger cities, more exotic trade routes, and increased contact with different populations of people, animals, and ecosystems – the more likely pandemics would occur.

Here are some of the major pandemics that have occurred over time:

Note: Many of the death toll numbers listed above are best estimates based on available research. Some, such as the Plague of Justinian, are subject to debate based on new evidence.

Despite the persistence of disease and pandemics throughout history, there’s one consistent trend over time – a gradual reduction in the death rate. Healthcare improvements and understanding the factors that incubate pandemics have been powerful tools in mitigating their impact.

Wrath of the Gods

In many ancient societies, people believed that spirits and gods inflicted disease and destruction upon those that deserved their wrath. This unscientific perception often led to disastrous responses that resulted in the deaths of thousands, if not millions.

In the case of Justinian’s plague, the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea traced the origins of the plague (the Yersinia pestis bacteria) to China and northeast India, via land and sea trade routes to Egypt where it entered the Byzantine Empire through Mediterranean ports.

Despite his apparent knowledge of the role geography and trade played in this spread, Procopius laid blame for the outbreak on the Emperor Justinian, declaring him to be either a devil, or invoking God’s punishment for his evil ways. Some historians found that this event could have dashed Emperor Justinian’s efforts to reunite the Western and Eastern remnants of the Roman Empire, and marked the beginning of the Dark Ages.

Luckily, humanity’s understanding of the causes of disease has improved, and this is resulting in a drastic improvement in the response to modern pandemics, albeit slow and incomplete.

Importing Disease

The practice of quarantine began during the 14th century, in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Cautious port authorities required ships arriving in Venice from infected ports to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing — the origin of the word quarantine from the Italian “quaranta giorni”, or 40 days.

One of the first instances of relying on geography and statistical analysis was in mid-19th century London, during a cholera outbreak. In 1854, Dr. John Snow came to the conclusion that cholera was spreading via tainted water and decided to display neighborhood mortality data directly on a map. This method revealed a cluster of cases around a specific pump from which people were drawing their water from.

While the interactions created through trade and urban life play a pivotal role, it is also the virulent nature of particular diseases that indicate the trajectory of a pandemic.

Tracking Infectiousness

Scientists use a basic measure to track the infectiousness of a disease called the reproduction number — also known as R0 or “R naught.” This number tells us how many susceptible people, on average, each sick person will in turn infect.

Measles tops the list, being the most contagious with a R0 range of 12-18. This means a single person can infect, on average, 12 to 18 people in an unvaccinated population.

While measles may be the most virulent, vaccination efforts and herd immunity can curb its spread. The more people are immune to a disease, the less likely it is to proliferate, making vaccinations critical to prevent the resurgence of known and treatable diseases.

It’s hard to calculate and forecast the true impact of COVID-19, as the outbreak is still ongoing and researchers are still learning about this new form of coronavirus.

Urbanization and the Spread of Disease

We arrive at where we began, with rising global connections and interactions as a driving force behind pandemics. From small hunting and gathering tribes to the metropolis, humanity’s reliance on one another has also sparked opportunities for disease to spread.

Urbanization in the developing world is bringing more and more rural residents into denser neighborhoods, while population increases are putting greater pressure on the environment. At the same time, passenger air traffic nearly doubled in the past decade. These macro trends are having a profound impact on the spread of infectious disease.

As organizations and governments around the world ask for citizens to practice social distancing to help reduce the rate of infection, the digital world is allowing people to maintain connections and commerce like never before.

Editor’s Note: The COVID-19 pandemic is in its early stages and it is obviously impossible to predict its future impact. This post and infographic are meant to provide historical context, and we will continue to update it as time goes on to maintain its accuracy.

Update (March 15, 2020): We’ve adjusted the death toll for COVID-19, and will continue to update on a regular basis.

Source:https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/

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If you thought you were going somewhere to do something, forget it.  In the continuing strategy of never letting a crisis go to waste, it seems that there’s no point in waiting to see the extent of the crisis.  An economic crisis has been created, regardless.

Conferences are being canceled.  Concerts, festivals, sporting events, vacations, you name it.  What might happen to Las Vegas?  Will everything be canceled?  Will they close the casinos?  Will the entire economy of the United States be sacrificed on the altar of panic?  The stock market shed nearly a third of its value over the past two weeks, and that’s real, whether the health risks are or not.

The Trump haters should have figured this out long before now.  All they had to do in the first place was create a public health panic, true or otherwise.  Trump haters have longed for an economic recession, regardless of the pain and suffering it might cause.  Blaming Trump, perhaps not for having created the virus, but at least for not caring enough or not having taken the proper precautions, is reason enough to keep stoking fear.

What about the wild gyrations in the stock market?  Do you think money managers and stockbrokers make money while the market is rocking along normally?  In fact, they make their biggest paychecks when big transactions take place.  Having people in a state of panic, selling to get out before they get wiped out, or buying at a perceived low, has to be lining their pockets.  Big swings, of the sort we’ve seen over recent weeks, is boon to money managers and brokers.  Panic isn’t bad for everyone.

If it means that Trump takes the blame or bears responsibility for not having reacted properly, so much the better.  Just ask the homosexuals at the anchor desks.  The President has obviously mishandled every aspect of this crisis.  What a bum!

Having turned briefly to CNN just to see what they were doing, without staying long enough to turn the air blue, proud anchor Don Lemon had John Kasich on to lambaste Trump’s televised address on the coronavirus.  Kasich was on the network due to the fact that he’s been reliably anti-Trump, what’s known as a never-Trumper.  When Kasich allowed as how he thought Trump handled the televised statement “just fine,” sounding the right amount of seriousness, anchor Lemon boiled over.  He threw a hissy fit at Kasich about Trump, talking over him turning the interview into a shouting match, ultimately getting himself so worked up he all but cried.  How dare Kasich appear and not express outrage at Trump?

And what’s with these tests?  The most effective of recent criticism has been that the government was unprepared, with not enough tests.  But as we’ve seen, some of those who’ve tested positive don’t have any symptoms!  At least two under mandatory quarantine have appeared on national television, feeling great physically, but having tested positive.  They appeared healthy and happy except that they can’t leave to go anywhere until they’ve tested negative two or three times consecutively.  It is interesting that people testing positive are showing no symptoms.  Hmmm.

You’ve heard of the “containment zone,” some New York suburb where no one can leave their home for two or three weeks.  What will you bet somebody in the “zone” tests positive and the quarantine gets extended again and again?  Schools have extended Spring Break an extra week and cancellations of every imaginable gathering are roiling across the nation like a tidal wave.  Every professional sporting activity has been canceled.  The NBA, MLB, the NHL, College Basketball tournaments, and that’s just the beginning.

One of the most infuriating things to come out is the suggestion that some business concerns are refusing to accept cash. It might transmit the coronavirus, mind you, so kindly use your debit card or the Internet to make transactions.  One of the dreams of the left is to ban cash.  If all transactions have to be electronic, then there’s nothing one can do without oversight by government authorities.  And isn’t that the socialists’ dream?  Government monitoring and control over buying and selling?

Maybe the coronavirus is all it’s cracked up to be but forgive my cynicism.  We’ve watched the mainstream media lie their faces off for three and a half years.  Are we to suddenly believe them, now that they’re trying to frighten everyone to self-quarantine?  Maybe this is the magic bullet that will finally take Trump down, and they’re positively giddy delivering the latest dire report.  Two weeks ago I made the mistake of saying I didn’t want to hear one more word about the coronavirus.  But it seems as though we’ll hear of nothing else for the foreseeable future.  Hopefully, it joins Russia, Russia, Russia, the Ukrainian phone call and the fake impeachment as another attempt to depose the President.

If you want to stay home and wash your hands every five minutes, knock yourself out.  Who doesn’t want to play hooky from work or school, and have an excuse nobody dares question?  It’s perfect!  We can all remain glued to the latest positive test result, just in case.  Maybe Trump didn’t create the virus, but it’s the establishment’s only bet to turn the country against the President.  They all seem to be in on it, the corporations, the sporting franchises, the media.  Some people are engaged in panic buying, whether food, toilet paper or gasoline.  Isn’t this fun?

It turns out that abortion will be funded, government power expanded and authority transferred from the executive branch to the legislative branch as part of coronavirus legislation.  If Trump doesn’t sign on, they’ll explain it as proof he doesn’t care about poor sick people.  We’ll see in the long run but there is the distinct possibility we’re being played.

We’re not going to cancel church this week, but you can always keep the Sabbath at home if you wish.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 13 March 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was blunt Wednesday in her assessment of how coronavirus will impact her nation: A vast majority of people in Germany will get coronavirus, and there is little or nothing anyone can do about that right now.

What did she say?

“When the virus is out there, the population has no immunity and no therapy exists, then 60 to 70% of the population will be infected,” Merkel said, Reuters reported. “The process has to be focused on not overburdening the health system by slowing the virus’s spread … It’s about winning time.”

Potential impact

Germany has a population of about 82 million. Merkel is predicting that more than 57 million people in Germany will be infected with the coronavirus. Mortality rates are hard to nail down right now due to the variables of different nations and a continuing lack of adequate testing capability in some places, but even a conservative death rate applied to Merkel’s prediction means that more than half a million Germans could die from the virus.

The virus is especially dangerous for elderly people and those with pre-existing respiratory or immune system issues. In many patients, especially younger ones, the virus may cause only minor symptoms and present no danger.

For some context, Italy has more than 10,000 cases right now, and 631 people have died. The virus is so uncontrolled in Italy right now that the entire country is now under quarantine. Germany has 1,565 cases and three deaths so far.

Don’t panic?

Some, like Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, feel that Merkel’s alarming outlook on coronavirus will just create unnecessary panic, CNBC reported.

Preview of what’s to come?

The dangerous situation in Europe has caused concern in the United States about what may be coming in the United States, where the virus appears to be spreading rapidly and the ability to test people for it has not yet caught up to demand.

In the U.S., 32 people have died of coronavirus, and there are more than 1,000 known cases.

“I can say we will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday morning according to CBS News.

Source: https://www.theblaze.com/news/angela-merkel-70-percent-of-germany-is-getting-coronavirus-and-theres-not-much-we-can-do

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The latest from inside China thanks to our on-the-ground expert: “While residents of Wuhan have been blocked from leaving the city ever since it was quarantined on January 23, the approximately 5 million Wuhan locals who were stuck outside of Wuhan when the quarantine was implemented face their own unique challenges. They have been turned away from hotels, shunned by peers, and put into lockdown by local governments.”

n January 28, a woman from Wuhan was waiting for her flight from Japan back to China when she became aware of an escalating conflict between the passengers hailing from Shanghai and those hailing from Wuhan and Hubei province. A Shanghai passenger, having overheard someone speaking in Wuhan dialect, became concerned about the potential spread of coronavirus. Another Shanghai passenger claimed to have seen one of the Wuhan passengers taking anti-fever medications. The standoff received widespread attention around China. Even Wuhan people outside of Wuhan are not immune to the consequences of the epidemic that started in their city and has now infected more than twenty thousand people and killed more than four hundred.

Eventually, China Southern Airlines flight CZ380, landed seven hours later in Shanghai, after the Shanghai municipal government had stepped in to help resolve the situation. The 16 Wuhan residents were stuck together in the back of the plane and greeted by health professionals to be put into isolation for fourteen days.

The Weibo post by Wuhan passenger ‘Pomello’ about the incident, in which she accused the angry Shanghai passengers of not acting like compatriots, went viral, generating 2.1 million likes and 107,000 comments.

While residents of Wuhan have been blocked from leaving the city ever since it was quarantined on January 23, the approximately five million Wuhan locals who were stuck outside of Wuhan when the quarantine was implemented face their own unique challenges. They have been turned away from hotels, shunned by peers, and put into lockdown by local governments.

Asked about the discrimination Wuhan people are facing, Wuhan Communist Party Secretary said at a press conference, “The vast majority of people treat Wuhan people well.”

Many of the measures to contain the virus that hit Wuhan people hard, moreover, are necessary, given the severity of the problem. In the controversy over flight CZ380, many Chinese sided with the Shanghai passengers.  A poll posted to Weibo of 1,038,000 web users showed 83.3 percent said the reactions of those who did not want to board was “understandable,” and just 8 percent decried the actions as “not understandable.”

Right or wrong—and sometimes it is difficult to judge in a quickly-developing situation when health and safety are on the line—it is undeniable that Wuhan people, both inside and outside the city, are having a tough time. And at least some of the reactions have been unjustifiable discrimination.

For example, after the news about the flight went viral, quite a few angry netizens attacked the Wuhan folks for “running around” outside of their hometown. ‘Pomello’ quoted one such critic and responded, “We are also victims. When we left, the city wasn’t quarantined. We didn’t flee. We were ordinary travelers. Who could have predicted it would have become this circumstance?”

Indeed, it is a misnomer to say that five million Wuhan people “fled” the city. The epidemic began spreading like crazy over Spring Festival travel rush, a period before the holiday during which hundreds of millions of Chinese return to their ancestral hometowns to celebrate the lunar new year or take the time off with international travel. The quarantine was not imposed until long after travel plans had been made. An analysis by The Paper (Pengpai News) found that the five million figure, which was asserted by Wuhan’s mayor, was approximately equal to the number of people who had left Wuhan over the same time frame during 2017’s Spring Festival travel rush. At most, only about three hundred thousand people—a drop in the bucket in Chinese terms—left Wuhan in the ten hours between when the quarantine was announced, and when it was implemented, The Paper found.

Many of those Wuhan travelers were caught off guard when the city was quarantined and left with few options, neither able to stay put nor return home. For a few days after the quarantine, air and rail travel into Wuhan was also suspended. Stories of Wuhan people having their hotels kick them onto the streets came out. One story of a Wuhan woman who couldn’t find a hotel room went viral, but it was later removed.

Many local governments ended up designating lodging, mostly cheap motels, for stranded Wuhan travelers, some of whom were required to stay for fourteen days—in most cases, the expenses paid for by the governments—before they can be released. After two flights from Thailand landed in Nanjing with a few dozen travelers who had previously passed through Wuhan landed in Nanjing, all passengers had to be tested, and many were put in quarantine. After the CZ380 flight controversy went viral, the Chinese embassy in Japan arranged for charter flights to take over one hundred Wuhan people still in Japan back to Wuhan.

One Wuhan man’s story, which was published by a finance website and shared on leading news aggregator Sina, remains online. It recounts how he and his parents had to take a train to a city thirty miles away to find a hotel that would accept them.

They had long before planned a trip to Macau for January 20–24. On January 23, the quarantine was imposed (after having been announced the day before), and their flight back to Wuhan was abruptly canceled. One hotel rejected them outright. The next said they would need to get checked first by a hospital. The hospital said it could only confirm they had no fever but not that they had not been infected by the novel strain of coronavirus, which can take two weeks to show symptoms.

His father recommended they go to Zhongshan, a city to the north almost halfway between Zhuhai and Guangzhou, where he had a friend. While the friend’s home proved too small for three people, they did find a hotel—but they could only stay two nights. After the first day, they were told to leave; they remained for one more night despite power and water to their room being shut off. The next day, they decided to return to Wuhan, but they could not buy a ticket.

Finally, only after being taken in by the police, who filed two reports, were they able to be on their way. After the first report, another police officer stopped them on their way out and told them they had to be taken to the authorities at the next level up and have a report filed with them. They were offered to be taken to a government-designated hotel, where they would be allowed to stay for 138 yuan per night (less than US$20, a low price in China). They declined and opted to buy train tickets back to Wuhan instead.

The ticket office would not sell tickets directly to Wuhan. To get to Wuhan, they were told, they would need to buy tickets to Xinyang, a city north of Hubei, on the southern border of Henan province.

Before boarding the train, the author wrote, he warned his parents not to speak too much, as their thick local dialects would reveal them to be Wuhanites. Finally, the train did in fact stop at Wuhan station, sparing the three another tiring leg of their saga.

The author concluded by writing, “As far as I know, there were many whose journeys home were more torturous than mine.”

Currently based in China, Mitchell Blatt is a former editorial assistant at the National Interest, Chinese-English translator, and lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong. He has been published in The Korea Times, Silkwinds magazine, and Areo Magazine, among other outlets. Follow him on Facebook at @MitchBlattWriter.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coronavirus-chaos-torturous-journey-home-5-million-homeless-wuhan-people-120506

The post Coronavirus Chaos: The Torturous Journey Home for 5 Million ‘Homeless’ Wuhan People first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

• In an attempt to contain the Wuhan coronavirus, China has issued the largest quarantine in human history.
• The country has put 16 cities on lockdown, affecting an estimated 46 million people.
• Quarantines have been used to prevent the spread of disease for hundreds of years. The first formal system was established in Venice during the 14th Century.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

In a matter of weeks, the Wuhan coronavirus has killed more than 100 people and infected over 4,600. The Chinese government is scrambling to contain the disease, and in doing so, has issued the largest quarantine in human history — locking down 16 cities.

But will it work?

The idea of separating the healthy from the sick is not new. Documents dating as far back as the Old Testament contain rules for isolating people with Leprosy.

Here are some of the most prominent examples, and failures, of quarantines throughout history.

The bubonic plague initiated the first “formal” quarantine in Venice.

The plague of 1348 in Florence, engraving based on a painting by Luigi Sabatelli (1772-1850), from L’Illustrazione Italiana, No 48, December 2, 1877. Getty Images

In 1348, Venice established the first official quarantine system in order to keep the bubonic plague or “Black Death” from spreading through its ports. A Venetian council was given the authority to prevent ships, cargo, and people suspected of infection from entering the city for 40 days.

During this time, the city built a holding center on an island off the coast, where infected individuals were sent to either wait out their 40-day trial or die. This isolation period became known as quarantinario, taken from the Italian word for 40. Thus, the first official “quarantine” was born.

But these efforts hardly stopped the disease from spreading. The Black Death ultimately killed 15 million people — about one-fifth of the population across Europe.

A yellow fever outbreak spread throughout Philadelphia in 1793.

Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793. Carriages rumbled through the streets to pick up the dying and the dead. Woodcut shows Stephen Girard on errand of mercy. Getty Images

In 1832, a cholera epidemic hit New York City.

Selected from cases treated at the Cholera Hospital, Rivington Street, New York, 1832. Lithograph by Horatio Bartley. New York Historical Society/Getty Images

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In June 1832, a steamboat arriving from Albany brought news that Cholera had been spreading in Canada. Almost immediately, NYC Mayor Walter Bowne issued a strict quarantine to protect the city, a stipulation that declared no vehicle could come “closer than 300 yards to the city; no vehicle closer than a mile and a half,” according to The Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review.

But the quarantine didn’t do much to contain the disease. By the end of June, the first case of Cholera was reported in the city, and by the end of the epidemic, over 3,500 people had died. Plus, 70,000 people left New York, spreading the disease to other parts of the country.

A typhus outbreak in New York City showed the country’s history of targeting immigrants for quarantining.

New York, NY: Immigrant children being examined by city health officer upon arrival at the battery from Ellis Island during Typhus Scare. Photograph, 1911. Getty Images

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In the United States, quarantines have had a history of targeting immigrants for isolation.

In 1892, a typhus fever epidemic broke out among Russian-Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The local health department took hundreds of immigrants into custody, quarantining them in tents on North Brother Island in the East River.

But non-immigrant New Yorkers who got sick or were suspected of having the disease weren’t removed from their homes or treated with such harsh isolation.

In 1900, a bubonic plague scare resulted in the quarantine of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco.

At the turn of the century, authorities in San Francisco targeted Chinese immigrants for quarantine after a man was found dead in the basement of a hotel.

Authorities even “strung rope and barbed wire around a 12-square-block section of Chinatown,” NPR reported, holding Chinese immigrants inside while allowing white residents to evacuate.

This quarantine was lifted after a few days, but some Chinese laborers who were forced into isolation lost their jobs.

In 1907, the infamous “Typhoid Mary” was quarantined after making people sick from her cooking.

Mary Mallon, known historically as “Typhoid Mary” was an Irish immigrant whose cooking caused an outbreak of typhoid fever, a form of salmonella that can be deadly.

Mallon herself was immune to the disease, but when authorities realized that she had initiated the typhoid fever outbreak in the city, she was sentenced for quarantine at North Brother Island for three years.

Upon her release, she told authorities she would never cook for others and risk the spread of disease again. But after breaking that promise in 1915, she was sent back to the island for a lifelong quarantine of 23 more years.

From 1918-1919, a massive outbreak of influenza resulted in large-scale quarantining in both Europe and the US.

The most severe flu pandemic in recent history killed 50 million people worldwide. About 675,000 Americans died, and during the height of the crisis, nearly every major city made efforts to isolate the infected, cut off public transportation, close down schools, and prevent public gatherings.

While these efforts may have helped the disease from spreading temporarily, millions of people still died, and these methods were largely seen as “hugely socially disruptive,” NPR reported.

In 1944, the US passed the Public Health Service Act, establishing a clear set of quarantine laws.

In 1944, the US government established a clear understanding of the federal government’s authority to quarantine citizens for the first time.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the Public Health Service was given the right to prevent the “introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States.”

The CDC still operates under this law to this day.

HIV-positive patients were quarantined throughout Cuba in 1986.

institute of tropical medecine in June 1989 in Havana, Cuba. (Photo by Raphael GAILLARDE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

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Beginning in 1986, Cuba declared the first cases of HIV/AIDS a public health emergency and began indefinite and mandatory quarantining of all individuals testing positive for HIV, according to PBS.

Patients were quarantined in treatment centers called “sanitariums,” and it wasn’t until 1993 that patients could finally choose to return home after completing an eight-week treatment course.

The CDC took over quarantining responsibilities in the US in 1967.

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

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In 1967, the US Centers for Disease Control became the federal agency responsible for executing the nation’s quarantines. During this time, there were 55 quarantine stations in the US, located at “every port, international airport, and major border crossing.”

In 2003, a global SARS outbreak became “the first pandemic of the 21st century.”

Reuters

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The SARS coronavirus incited worldwide panic and multiple quarantines throughout the early 2000s. The virus originated in China and became known as “the first pandemic of the 21st century.”

Though the Chinese government took longer to respond to SARS than the Wuhan virus, eventually cities including Beijing issued travel quarantines that affected thousands of people.

But perhaps the most interesting quarantine during the SARS outbreak happened in Canada, where almost 100 people were quarantined for every case in the country. A shocking 30,000 people were confined to hospitals or their homes in Toronto, even though the city had only 250 reported cases.

A 2014 bubonic plague scare resulted in quarantines in China.

In 2014, a single man was found dead of the bubonic plague in the Chinese city of Yumen, The Guardian reported at the time.

The city of Yumen — which had a population of 30,000 — was put on lockdown, with four quarantine centers set up for precaution, and 151 people who came into contact with the man were placed into immediate quarantine.

But no other cases of the bubonic plague were confirmed, and after just two days, the quarantine was lifted, NPR reported.

From 2014-2016, multiple countries issued quarantines to prevent the spread of Ebola.

In March 2014, the World Health Organization reported a deadly outbreak of Ebola throughout West Africa. By July, the virus had spread to seven more countries, and quarantines were issued in multiple locations.

The West Point neighborhood of Liberia was supposed to be quarantined for 21 days, the incubation period for the disease, but protests throughout the region ended it halfway through, NPR reported.

In Sierra Leone, people were quarantined for three days, and in the United States, health care workers who may have came in contact with the disease were subject to a 21-day quarantine in a number of states.

By 2016, a total of 28,652 cases of Ebola and 11,325 deaths were reported worldwide.

According to NPR, Doctors Without Borders issued a statement saying: “It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola, as they end up driving people underground and jeopardizing the trust between people and health providers.”

Here’s what quarantining looks like in the US today.

All US quarantines are under control of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, a branch of the CDC, which currently has 20 quarantine stations throughout the country.

These stations are located at US ports of entry with the highest amount of international traffic, and operate 24/7.

Health officials screen passengers at airports, and if they identify someone with a highly contagious disease, they can track down anyone that person may have come into contact with so they can quarantine them before the disease spreads.

The Wuhan coronavirus has resulted in the largest quarantine in human history.

China has quarantined 16 cities to try and contain the Wuhan coronavirus, putting an estimated 46 million people on lockdown.

On January 23, authorities in Wuhan shut down the city’s public transportation, including buses, trains, ferries, and the airport. Quarantines followed in the cities of Huanggang, Ezhou, Chibi, Xiantao, Zhijiang, Qianjjiang, Huangshi, Xianning, Yichang, Enshi, Xiangyang, Jingmen, Xiaogan, Dangyang, and Suizhou.

But some experts fear the quarantine may have come too late, or could even make the situation worse, by making access to food, fuel, and medical supplies more difficult. The mayor of Wuhan said 5 million people fled the city before the quarantine went into effect, as urban Chinese workers headed home for the Lunar New Year.

Kristin Stapleton, an urban historian who studies Chinese history at the University of Buffalo, told Business Insider’s Aria Bendix that she thinks “many people are probably staying put out of fear, both of the coronavirus and of the high-tech community surveillance that has become pervasive in Chinese cities.”

The virus, which scientists call 2019-nCoV, has killed 107 people and infected nearly 4,600 in 17 countries as of Tuesday, with the vast majority of cases reported in China.

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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/quarantine-history-following-china-wuhan-coronavirus-lockdowns-2020-1

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The post China put 46 million people on lockdown to contain the Wuhan coronavirus. But quarantines throughout history have been riddled with mishaps. first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Azar also said that President Trump is temporarily suspending entry into the U.S. for foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the virus.

US CORONAVIRUS EVACUEES BEING KEPT UNDER 14-DAY QUARANTINE, CDC SAYS

In the same press conference, the Department of Homeland Security announced that starting on Sunday, flights coming to the U.S. from China will be funneled through seven airports that are equipped to screen passengers for symptoms of the virus.

The move comes as Delta Air Lines and American Airlines suspended flights between the U.S. and China, following several other international airlines who made similar announcements. United Airlines said that it was suspending flights to Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, but would continue flying to Hong Kong.

Officials continued to stress that the overall risk to the American public remains low, but that the measures being taken are to help “focus efforts as we are dealing with unknowns.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said that one of the unknowns is the recent development out of Germany that the virus can be transmitted from an infected person who is asymptomatic.

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The announcement comes just hours after the CDC said the 195 passengers who arrived in California on a flight from China on Wednesday were being kept under a 14-day quarantine as they are continually monitored for symptoms.

As of Friday, there had been more than 9,600 confirmed cases of the coronavirus with over 200 deaths. Officials said that the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. remains at six, with the latest being an Illinois man whose wife was diagnosed with the virus after traveling to Wuhan, which is considered the epicenter of the outbreak.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-declared-public-health-emergency-in-us

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