[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?

[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.

[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.

[DBtoo]

Does anyone know whether they would quarantine people in their own homes, or force them to go to another location?