Social Question

elbanditoroso's avatar

Could the ebola crisis evolve into a pretext to lock potentially infected people up in internment camps? (like the Japanese were in WW2)

Asked by elbanditoroso (33577points) October 5th, 2014

It strikes me that Ebola (and its potential epidemic danger in the US) might be just the pretext needed to lock up undesirables who have, or might have, Ebola.

It’s a right-wing wet dream. Ebola comes from Africa. What better excuse to lock up immigrants – legal or not? People who have good medical care get taken care of, while others without private insurance go to the camps.

And the NSA and FBI know all about us anyway, so identifying the undesirables and potentially infected becomes pretty simple.

Paranoia? Reality? Time will tell.

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

18 Answers

SecondHandStoke's avatar

A non airborne virus isn’t going to wipe out an advanced nation such as the US.

The exhaustion from all the hype might just do me in however.

BeenThereSaidThat's avatar

Let me get this straight. Conservatives want themselves and their family members to die of Ebola. While Liberals want their family members and fellow citizens to live. OK, now I get it.
Ebola, the answer to the “right-wings” dream. <sigh>

pleiades's avatar

I’ve read several comments from South Africans on how the U.S. is so paranoid about ebola and South Africans aren’t even fretting it. It’s not a very good logical comparison but it’s one they’re making. But then again, the U.S. is sending a lot of people to the warzone.

@SecondHandStoke How are you certain there is not a particular strain of the ebola virus that is airborne?

This epidemic is still being studied you know? They have found the virus can transmit airborne from non-primate humans to other species. http://healthmap.org/site/diseasedaily/article/pigs-monkeys-ebola-goes-airborne-112112

There are other articles that claim the same situation as well.

I don’t know that it’s airborne or not, I’m just skeptical that it is absolutely 100% not airborne.

Furthermore I’m extremely curious how the early Americans got the ebola virus. Since the claim is it’s transferred only by bodily fluids. So a sneeze could transfer the virus… or the Americans drank from a cup with some ebola saliva on it. I don’t know! But I would love to know how they got it.

elbanditoroso's avatar

There was something in today’s Times saying that the virus can remain alive on a counter or plate (or other smooth surface) for several hours.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

WTF does an ebola outbreak have to do with politics. That’s got nothing to do with “the right wing” it’s just general conspiracy nonsense. Those people politically are not in the right or left wing they are down the hall in the psych ward where they spend their days splicing newscasts into shitty youtube videos and posting paranoid web blogs.

elbanditoroso's avatar

@ARE_you_kidding_me – you are naive. Anything / everything has to do with politics, especially if there is (a) government involvement – which Ebola already has, because of the CDC – or (b) a politicians things that he/she can make political hay.

As I have said many times before, there is no issue that is too major not to be corrupted by politics.

syz's avatar

Ebola is a serious disease and precautionary measures are warranted.

However, CDC estimates that from the 1976–1977 season to the 2006–2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people..

Since its discovery, AIDS has caused an estimated 36 million deaths worldwide.

More Americans now die of hepatitis C than from HIV.

It would be wonderful if the media and the public would keep the Ebola crisis in perspective.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

@elbanditoroso Probably not as much as you think. You are confusing politics with power and control. Politics is simply one tool that is used in obtaining it. Now, simple political pandering and chess is very different from internment camps like you mention. That’s something completely different. If this does indeed get out of control we may actually need them for more practical reasons. If it gets that bad it won’t matter if you have insurance or not.

dappled_leaves's avatar

There’s a difference between internment camps set up for racially-undesirable or racially-untrustworthy members of the population and quarantine. The former is ethically and morally unjustifiable. The latter is common sense.

Politicizing quarantine is a terrible idea. People don’t have the “freedom” to walk around infecting the population at will, if the disease is as lethal as Ebola. Common cold? Sure, go nuts. But let’s not lose our heads here. Start saying that quarantine is effectively an internment camp, and you’ll have people hiding their symptoms, which is one of the reasons it’s been hard to contain in African countries. So, let’s not do that.

@elbanditoroso If you’re worried about the right wing calling for indiscriminate locking up of immigrants on the basis of an Ebola threat, just start calling it a liberal idea. They’ll avoid it like the… oh, never mind.

flutherother's avatar

It would be a very poor pretext as potentially infected people don’t stay potentially infected for long. They quickly show symptoms and either die or get better.

JLeslie's avatar

First of all no one in the US should be paranoid about Ebola at this point.

Secondly, people with an active case are quarantined just like TB cases are. We do it today. People hacking away with active TB are sent off to a room in a hospital. Once released sometimes they are followed up on to make sure they are taking their meds. The government would put similar measures in place for Ebola. TB patients can be ordered into isolation for months. This happens now in the US. I don’t think it is hospitalization that entire time, but I don’t know for sure the rules. This is not to be confused with positive for TB exposure, which many people have.

The worst part about massive quarantine or stopping air travel is the effect on the economy. The government would be reluctant to halt air travel and close off cities to control a disease, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

stanleybmanly's avatar

Don’t worry. The sheer expense of locking away and treating those with infectious diseases eliminates any consideration of using Ebola as a pretext for detaining people. The dirt cheap and far more probable remedy will be to exclude folks from tropical Africa from traveling to the United .States. It really is inexcusable that first world countries and in particular the United States allowed the disease to become endemic throughout West Africa. We in the United States are in for some stress on our public health system, but consider the nightmare ahead at the prospect of containing the disease in places like Haiti, the Philippines, anywhere in Latin America, including Mexico. Any land with an anemic public health system and teeming population is at dire risk. In fact, unless a cheap and effective vaccine is discovered and rushed into production in the very near future, places such as China are really in for unmitigated hell!

rojo's avatar

Sure and here is proof that it is all a government plot to kill Christians and rebuild the US in his image.

Or what about this RNC Chairman Priebus blames Obama for bringing Ebola to US

And from This article we get this quote: “In July, the President amended an Executive Order giving the medical emergency responders the legal powers to identify and detain individuals suspected of carrying a communicable disease. And though it’s not talked about publicly, it is widely believed the the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have already pre-positioned domestic detention camps and CDC quarantine centers in the event of a national security emergency. Ebola appearing in the United States would likely call for exactly such a declaration from the President. In such a scenario it is highly likely that military personnel will be deployed to maintain peace, as well as to work simultaneously with medical professionals to identify and detain those suspected of being infected.”

BeenThereSaidThat's avatar

^^
You must have looked at the bottom of the barrel for that article. You know what? You sound like one of those people who believe everything they “read on the internet”.

BeenThereSaidThat's avatar

@rojo I held my nose and read that article. no where do I see those quotes written by RNC Chariman Priebus. But I so see the writer of the article by this link. Yep, he really writes flame bait that websites like this would run to for links.

http://christwire.org/author/abe/

If a person looks like a nut, writes like a nut, he is probably a nut.

BeenThereSaidThat's avatar

apparently he writes his articles out of a shack in the woods of Georgia. You should check out Google sometimes.
http://christwire.org/2012/05/brother-abe-goodman-suffers-a-heart-attack/

flutherother's avatar

A quote from the ‘article’ “Do no forget, the B.O. in Ebola stands for Barack Obama” – priceless!

rojo's avatar

and the E stands for Endtimes and the la stands for la-la-land.

And, my bad, I provided the wrong link on Priebus, is should have been This one

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.
Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther