Some notes on intersections of law and health.
I recently saw this news story: in 2021, a woman in Washington state was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but repeatedly failed to complete her prescribed treatment--which can lead to the development of treatment-resistant strains of a disease. So in 2022, a court ordered her to isolate at home until she completed the treatment, which can take 6 to 12 months. But she has violated 16 court orders to isolate and complete treatment. In March, a warrant was issued for her arrest, directing that she be jailed for treatment. She was last seen in April boarding a bus to a local casino.
So I got curious and did some checking. Both SARSn (including C19) and TB are on the list of communicable diseases that federal, state, and tribal govenments have legal authority to control through isolation and quarantine rules in the US.
But has anyone in the US ever been found in contempt of court for not isolating with SARS2? Has a warrant even been issued for the arrest of anyone because they were out and about while contagious with Covid-19?
Covid-19 is more contagious than tuberculosis. It causes more deaths. According to the WHO, in 2021, 1.6 million people died of TB. Between 4 and 14 million died of Covid-19. TB was the 13th leading cause of death worldwide. Covid-19 was third.
Yet there were no states in which isolation requirements were ever as stringent as complete isolation; most public containment measures were brief and restrictions on individual movement allowed exceptions (e.g., for exercise, grocery shopping, medical appointments).
These measures have been recast as "lockdowns," a term expanded in public discourse "to include any public health measure, even if it places little to no restriction on social mobility or interaction." This has been described as "lockdown revisionism," a retrospective reframing that presents "public health measures as a form of subjugation by elites, while positioning public health as oppressive."
Again, Covid-19 is more contagious than tuberculosis and causes more deaths.
But not only have individuals contagious or potentially contagious with SARS2 not been subject to isolation orders backed up by legal sanctions, they have often been pressed to show up at work, at school, in public places.
