Globalism, Civil Liberties and Movement Restrictions
In my previous blog, This Island North America, I argued that movement restrictions could greatly decrease the impact of a pandemic in North America*. The first level of movement restrictions would be directed at keeping infected individuals from entering the North American continent by closing North American airspace and sea ports to civilians. If this failed, internal movement restrictions, containment, would be necessary to extinguish local outbreaks.
I suspect that most people would rather see external borders closed than quarantined cities. However, the only way to prevent the virus from entering North America would be to close external borders at the first sign of a pandemic. Many have argued that this is unlikely due to the economic costs of such actions. I agree that this is a legitimate concern. However, let us consider the costs of not acting to close our borders in a timely fashion.
If a high CFR pandemic occurs, and no attempts are made to prevent infected individuals from entering North America, public health officials will be unable to handle the consequences. This is why they are unwilling to answer direct questions about their plans for a high CFR pandemic. They don't have any. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security and local emergency managers will make an attempt to keep basic infrastructure functioning. I believe they will fail, as they did in New Orleans after Katrina. This leaves the military. They are the only governmental tool that has the resources to deal with infrastructure collapse. And the POTUS has indicated that he will consider using them to quarantine cities during a pandemic.
If the military is asked to provide security and logistical support for one or two cities, I believe they can be successful, as they were in New Orleans. However, if the military has to try to maintain order in 50 cities at the same time, their odds of success are low, imo. Further, if a large number of cities are being affected at the same time, food, medicine and fuel supplies will quickly dry up giving them nothing to distribute to the inhabitants of the quarantined cities. This then puts them in a terrible situation - having to restrict the movements of starving, terrified Americans. Truly a nightmare scenario for the military and for civil liberties.
The ACLU has recently published PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS THE NEED FOR A PUBLIC HEALTH – NOT A LAW ENFORCEMENT/NATIONAL SECURITY– APPROACH. I welcome their attention to this issue and agree with many of their points. However, they are dangerously misinformed on some key pieces of information.
For example:
A major reason why most current plans (which continue to evolve) are useless is that they assume the worst case scenario.
This is factually incorrect. AFAIK, there are no published plans that assume the worst case scenario. As the top flu experts have pointed out, the worst case scenario is that H5N1 goes pandemic with its current kill rate - over 60% (Webster et al. 2006; WHO Working Group, 2006).
Also from the ACLU report:
Worst case scenario planning encourages counterproductive overreactions in which law-enforcement techniques and drastic anti-civil liberties measures are used as the first resort, rather than the last resort.
This is untrue, imo. The published plans make it clear that public health officials will be in charge in the event of a mild pandemic. I see no indication that "drastic" steps will be taken if we have a low CFR pandemic. Nor would it be in anyone's interest to do so. Certainly not in the interest of Big Business which would prefer that there be as little disruption of their activities as possible.
Unfortunately, this report makes the mistake of The False Choice - Prepare or Support Public Health. Could someone direct them to my blog? ;-)
The ACLU report does get some important points right. For example:
This report calls for a new paradigm for pandemic preparedness based on the following general principles:
1. Health—The goal of preparing for a pandemic is to protect the lives and health of all people in America, not law enforcement or national security.
2. Justice—Preparation for a potential pandemic (or any disaster) should ensure a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of precautions and responses and equal respect for the dignity and autonomy of each individual.
3. Transparency—Pandemic preparedness requires transparent communication of accurate information among all levels of government and the public in order to warrant public trust.
4. Accountability—Everyone, including private individuals and organizations and
government agencies and officials, should be accountable for their actions before, during and after an emergency.
With the exception of point 1, which creates a false choice between national security and health, I agree with these principles. Given its unique understanding of the legal system and the government, the ACLU could be especially helpful with principle 3 - transparency.
Based on publicly available documents, which I reference here, I believe that there are plans to enact draconian movement restrictions, not in the event of a mild pandemic, but, rather, in the event of a high CFR pandemic. These plans are not being shared with the public. Indeed, repeated requests for information about government plans for a high CFR pandemic by members of Flublogia have been ignored. The ACLU would be harder to ignore.
So, if the ACLU is truly concerned about civil liberties, and I believe they are, they could do enormous good if they were to focus their efforts on finding out and publicising government plans for a high CFR pandemic. If they were successful, there would be a number of positive results, imo. First, many more individuals would decide to prepare. Second, many communities would get serious about preparing. Finally, the advocates for preparedness in government would finally have some support in their arguments with globalists who seek profits at any cost.
*The North American continent, to which I am referring, includes Canada, the USA, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. The southern-most border is the Panama canal.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
