The fact that anyone is even willing to talk out loud of quarantine is a scary red flag indicating just how bad this is. Quarantine is an extremely un PC subject.
Isolate incurables by any and every means possible. The very first of the ''inalienable'' rights mentioned by Jefferson is life. If your very existence, literally, threatens people's lives, your right to peaceably assemble ANYWHERE is void.
"The fact that anyone is even willing to talk out loud of quarantine is a scary red flag indicating just how bad this is. Quarantine is an extremely un PC subject."
XDR-TB is scary, and it's been confirmed in 27 countries so far, including the US. Since 1993 we've had 64 cases. 21 completed treatment, 20 died, and the remaining 23....who knows.
However, every state already has laws on the books to allow for the involuntary detainment of infectious TB patients who refuse to adhere (or who otherwise can't voluntarily adhere, as in the case of mental illness) to treatment. These are used even in garden variety TB that's sensitive to all first-line TB drugs. These laws are used as a last resort, but they are used.
The take-home message of XDR-TB is that TB drug resistance is entirely man-made (it doesn't occur in nature) and is the direct result of not providing adequate basic TB control. (On a side note, the World Bank has identified TB control as one of the world's most cost-effective health interventions, and they're going to release a report in the coming months showing the economic benefit of TB control.) Drug-resistant TB is not only more lethal, it's exponentially more costly to treat. It's also related to the fact that no new first-line TB drugs have come on the market in 40 years. The standard treatment regimen is 6-8 months long, using 4 drugs for a time and then 2 drugs for a time. The patient tends to feel better after just a couple weeks of treatment (and is also no longer infectious after that period), so without proper case management a patient isn't always likely to religiously take their drugs. Hence the rise of drug resistance.