Facts or Friction

The Department of Homeland Security has sent out an alert to health care providers outlining how BATF, FBI, and U.S. Marshals will be called upon to impose mandatory quarantines in the event of a widespread swine flu outbreak in the U.S.According to the report, “DHS Assistant Secretary Bridger McGaw circulated the swine flu memo, which was obtained by CBSNews.com, on Monday night. It says: “The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines.”The memo states, “U.S. Customs and Coast Guard Officers assist in the enforcement of quarantine orders. Other DOJ law enforcement agencies including the U.S. Marshals, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives may also enforce quarantines. Military personnel are not authorized to engage in enforcement.”However, a separate Defense Department planning document on dealing with pandemics states that the Pentagon will use the forces at its disposal to assist in “quarantining groups of people in order to minimize the spread of disease during an influenza pandemic” and aid in “efforts to restore and maintain order.”As we reported yesterday, so-called “involuntary isolation” is already being enforced in certain areas of the United States. The state’s health director in North Carolina, Dr. Jeffrey Engel, said that authorities were already involuntarily isolating patients who may have the swine flu virus. He refused to divulge the location of where the victims were being quarantined.News reports such as this one from MSNBC are prevaricating around the contention that quarantines are a normal event that Americans should be comfortable with. In reality, there has only been one case of “involuntary quarantine” in the U.S. in the last 45 years.“In 2007, Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta lawyer, was quarantined inside a hospital in Denver on suspicion of having extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. It turned out that the CDC was incorrect and Speaker had a milder form of the disease,” states the CBS report.The MSNBC report also falsely claims that quarantines will solely be handled on a state/local level, when in reality, Bush’s executive order 13375 outlines a federal response, and the DHS memo lists numerous federal authorities that will have powers of quarantine.In addition, the Bush administration’s National Strategy For Pandemic Influenza, released in November 2005, states that the federal government will impose “quarantines” and “limitations on gatherings”.With Time Magazine busy preparing Americans to accept enforced mass vaccination programs and telling them to “trust” the government and “forgive” them when the vaccines cause death and injuries, the prospect of mandatory quarantines will likely be the precursor for any such nationwide vaccination program. The vaccine to supposedly combat swine flu is being manufactured by Baxter International, who were caught red-handed last month attempting to release bird flu vaccines which were contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus itself.Swine flu has caused the death of one toddler in the U.S. and in fact only seven of the supposed 159 fatalities in Mexico have been confirmed as swine flu - meaning the other 152 could have been due to any number of infectious diseases that routinely kill Mexicans in the thousands on a yearly basis.The comparative threat of swine flu does not correlate with the feverish reaction of authorities, who in the initial stages of the outbreak refused to take any measures to contain it, such as closing the border with Mexico, but after the virus had already begun to spread, they were quick to prepare draconian control measures while hyping the inevitability of a pandemic.Meanwhile, the hysteria whipped up by the media has spread faster than the actual virus itself