MSNBC- President Bush Signs Executive Order Allowing Quarantine For SARS Patients.

MSNBC | 4/04/03

[TBall]

Do you happen to know what diseases make up the list for quarantine?

[mewzilla]

I don't know. I'm still wondering why this would require an EO and why current public health law wouldn't already cover it.

[Brian S]

Bush issues order allowing quarantine of SARS patients
By the Mercury News

President Bush issued an executive order today that would allow the quarantine of patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, the mysterious respiratory illness thought to have originated in China.

The illness has affected a suspected 115 people in the United States and 2,400 worldwide, killing around 80. Santa Clara County is at the epicenter of the country's SARS outbreak, with nine suspected cases, more than any other locale.

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

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

On Tuesday, international attention focused on the South Bay when an American Airlines flight from Tokyo was grounded for two hours after its arrival in San Jose because several people aboard displayed possible SARS symptoms. None had the disease.

Now, county public health officials plan to dig deeper for potential SARS cases through what they call ``expanded surveillance.'' The county is likely to be the first in the nation to more aggressively define SARS cases.

To define a case as suspected SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control requires doctors to diagnose a fever of more than 100.5 degrees and respiratory symptoms such as a cough or difficulty breathing -- in conjunction with recent travel to China, Vietnam, Hong Kong or Singapore.

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

Go to www.cdc.gov or call the Santa Clara County Public Health Department at (408) 885-3980 for more information about SARS.

[riri]

Do you happen to know what diseases make up the list for quarantine?

Apparently not, airborne, antibiotic resisitant TB-we let foreigners in with that on a regular basis- or so I read.

[IFly4Him]

I agree with your implication that diseases should be treated medically and not politically, but the coverage of SARS is definitely driving policy here.

Just for some perspective... I have a client who is a well known gastroenterologist. Did you know that bleeding complications from aspirin use (or other NSAIDS) cause 300 hospitalizations every day in the US and thousands of deaths each year!? (Don't remember the exact number, but it's b/w 30K and 60K). It has an equivalent rate to lymphoma and AIDS deaths! It's one of the top five.

[Betty Jo]

Go and read the new regs from the new laws.The gov can do things like move you out of your house,into camps.They can burn your house and property to the ground.Remember when I used to post about the "Bin Laden Medical Matriz"?

Well, I think SARS is the final product...an unknowable,untreatable designer DNA virus.Travels in the air,can live on surfaces,yada,yada.

How delicious that this SARS scheme,like 9/11, was in the public data base for years before it hit.

But our lazy,incompetent,corrupt government could not/would not stop it.

Will the bunkers of our elite protect them form SARS?

Will Condi once again utter her famous "No one would have dreamed...."?

Not only do I dream, I have nightmares.

They start with all the Ph.D's in medicine and microbiology that are imbedded in our and the worlds companies and hospitals.

They all are Islamic.

The "Bin Laden Medical Matrix" !

[Chad Fairbanks]

Gee... and so, if someone gets a VISA to travel here, THEN comes down with SARS, how would we know? They may not develop the symptoms until they are on the plane half way here... In which case, just like that recent flight, they will be quarantined... it's not like our government has the power to quarantine people while they are in another country...

Use your head, man...

[Timesink]

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

So which is it? Bush signed an executive order adding SARS to an already-extant list, or Bush signed an executive order making up the quarantine law out of whole cloth?

[P-Marlowe]

It's the FLU!

Get over it.

[mewzilla]

Not to downplay its seriousness, but in terms of infectiouness and mortality rate, seems to me that the flu is at least as bad if not worse than SARS. Guess I'm still wondering why, if we don't quarantine for the flu, we're going to quarantine for SARS.

[TheBigB]

90+% of the people infected with SARS recover fully. There have been about 100 suspected cases in the US, but not one...not one...death. Most have not even needed hospitalization.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/isolationquarantine.htm

The CDC recommends isolation for ill SARS patients, but has not compelled isolation or quarantine. All this EO did was add SARS to the list of quarantinable diseases. This really isn't much of a story, IMHO.

[ladysusan]

This is a very smart move. Thanks for posting this. I do hope they are at least tracking others who may have been exposed....

[TheBigB]

The list already existed. The phrase The order also names cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Lassa and Marburg can be taken many ways, one of which is that the actual order was worded such that these diseases were simply named as examples of other diseases already on the list.

[Chad Fairbanks]

This really isn't much of a story, IMHO.

Sure it is! It's made to order - perfect for those 'Bush is selling us out to his global cororate masters!' theories...

[per loin]

Hospitalized Hong Kong SARS cases

Time		Number of cases		Percentage Increase				Number of current deaths as a percentage of case totals on previous days
Day	Date	New	Total	Day	Week	Recovered	Deaths	Today	Day ago	2 Days	3 Days	4 Days	5 Days	6 Days	Week
Wed	03/19		150
Thu	03/20	23	173	15.33%
Fri	03/21	30	203	17.34%
Sat	03/22	19	222	9.36%
Sun	03/23	25	247	11.26%
Mon	03/24	13	260	5.26%
Tue	03/25	26	286	10.00%
Wed	03/26	30	316	10.49%	110.67%
Thu	03/27	51	367	16.14%	112.14%
Fri	03/28	58	425	15.80%	109.36%
Sat	03/29	45	470	10.59%	111.71%		10	2.13%	2.35%	2.72%	3.16%	3.50%	3.85%	4.05%	4.50%
Sun	03/30	60	530	12.77%	114.57%		13	2.45%	2.77%	3.06%	3.54%	4.11%	4.55%	5.00%	5.26%
Mon	03/31	80	610	15.09%	134.62%		15	2.46%	2.83%	3.19%	3.53%	4.09%	4.75%	5.24%	5.77%
Tue	04/1	75	685	12.30%	139.51%		16	2.34%	2.62%	3.02%	3.40%	3.76%	4.36%	5.06%	5.59%
Wed	04/2	23	708	3.36%	124.05%	89	16	2.26%	2.34%	2.62%	3.02%	3.40%	3.76%	4.36%	5.06%
Thu	04/3	26	734	3.67%	100.00%	98	17	2.32%	2.40%	2.48%	2.79%	3.21%	3.62%	4.00%	4.63%
Fri	04/4	27	761	3.68%	79.06%	99	17	2.23%	2.32%	2.40%	2.48%	2.79%	3.21%	3.62%	4.00%
Averages				10.78%	113.57%			2.31%	2.52%	2.79%	3.13%	3.55%	4.01%	4.48%	4.98%

[Brian S]

Here is a better article that answers your questions:

President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday gave health officials authority to quarantine Americans sick with the highly contagious new mystery illness.

Health officials have no immediate plans to use the new powers in fighting severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

In an executive order signed Friday, Bush added SARS to the list of diseases for which health authorities have authority to involuntarily quarantine Americans.

It's the first time a new disease has been added to the list in two decades.

"If spread in the population," the order says, SARS "would have severe public health consequences."

Several diseases have long been on the list for which quarantine may be used: cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and several viral hemorrhagic fevers.

SARS, whose symptoms include fever, aches, cough and shortness of breath, has killed at least 85 people in Asia and Canada and sickened at least 2,300 in more than a dozen nations as infected travelers spread the disease. In the United States, 100 cases in 27 states have been reported.

About 4 percent of the victims have died from the disease, though none of them in this country. There's no cure yet, but most sufferers are recovering with timely hospital care.

[TBall]

I wonder if there will be reoccurrence for patients who get SARS?

[freeeee]

if someone gets a VISA to travel here, THEN comes down with SARS, how would we know?

You can't. That's why no one from SARS countries should be allowed in until they have this under control in their own country.

it's not like our government has the power to quarantine people while they are in another country...

But they do have the power to revoke Visas into our country.

But they won't do that. But why not? Because there's big money at stake. Surely we can't alienate foreigners we depend on for our global economy. Money talks, right?

But that's fine. We'll still let them in, and when they get Americans sick, we'll just quarantine them. After all, its just the rights of Americans at stake and foreigners and their money are so much more important than that.

Isn't globalism great?