Obama administration scraps quarantine regulations Posted 4/1/2010

[lostinblue 1,989]

Obama administration scraps quarantine regulations

Posted 4/1/2010

By Alison Young, USA TODAY

The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.

The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. They also would have expanded requirements for airlines to report ill passengers to the CDC and mandated that airlines collect and maintain contact information for fliers in case they later needed to be traced as part of an investigation into an outbreak.

Airline and civil liberties groups, which had opposed the rules, praised their withdrawal.

The Air Transport Association had decried them as imposing "unprecedented" regulations on airlines at costs they couldn't afford. "We think that the CDC was right to withdraw the proposed rule," association spokeswoman Elizabeth Merida said Thursday.

The American Civil Liberties Union had objected to potential passenger privacy rights violations and the proposal's "provisional quarantine" rule. That rule would have allowed the CDC to detain people involuntarily for three business days if the agency believed they had certain diseases: pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, plague, cholera, SARS, smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria or viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.

"The fact that they're backing away from this very coercive style of quarantine is good news," said ACLU legislative counsel Christopher Calabrese, who was unaware the proposed rules had been withdrawn.

CDC officials had stressed the rules would only be used in rare circumstances when someone posed a threat and refused to cooperate. The new rules, they noted at the time, added legal protections and appeals for those subject to quarantines.

CDC spokeswoman Christine Pearson said in a statement Thursday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC's parent agency, withdrew the proposed regulations after discussion across the government made it clear that "further revision and reconsideration is necessary to update the regulations."

HHS and the CDC are crafting new regulations that will incorporate public health lessons learned since 2005, Pearson said in the statement. She did not elaborate and referred questions to HHS. HHS spokeswoman Vicki Rivas-Vazquez said late Thursday the department had no further comment.

Last June, after the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic emerged, the White House Office of Management and Budget received the final rules for review, records show. HHS withdrew the proposed regulations Jan. 20 — after more than four years of refining them and reviewing public comments.

Jennifer Nuzzo, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity, said the rapid worldwide spread of swine flu showed flaws in the proposed regulations' premise.

"They probably learned during H1N1 that this hope of preventing diseases from entering the country by stationing people at airports is unrealistic," she said.

In 2007, after an Atlanta man with drug-resistant tuberculosis drew international attention to the potential risks posed by infected air travelers, CDC Director Julie Gerberding testified before Congress that the proposed regulations would improve the agency's ability to identify exposed passengers quickly. Gerberding, now president of Merck Vaccines, was unavailable for comment Thursday.

Even in the Bush administration, some were skeptical of the CDC's 2005 proposal, said Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009. "There were a lot of questions about how plausible it was to treat airports as a place where you could stop and inspect and quarantine people," Baker said Thursday.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-01-quarantine_N.htm

[lostinblue 1,989]

"There were a lot of questions about how plausible it was to treat airports as a place where you could stop and inspect and quarantine people," Baker said Thursday.

You close the borders and anyone intent on traveling from an ebola country does the quarantine in their home country... You control it at the source....We have a visa process use it.

[Dakine10 5,452]

Is it possible to have mass hysteria with just a single person? LIB is sure trying.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Is it possible to have mass hysteria with just a single person? LIB is sure trying.

You don't see yet what lib has been seeing for years - Obama is trying to bring the US to her knees. Ebola is how he'll get it done.

[SMOKE 1,426]

nice one 0bama

[decocker 7,198]

nice one 0bama

he's so creative right? i mean, the influx of illegal children, ebola, isis. like he's ushering in the nwo holy trinity or something.

[Teddy B 17,252]

he's so creative right? i mean, the influx of illegal children, ebola, isis. like he's ushering in the nwo holy trinity or something.

Rumor has it that all of those illegal children who were moved to undisclosed locations all over the US, were first intentionally infected with Ebola by Obama himself.

[decocker 7,198]

Rumor has it that all of those illegal children who were moved to undisclosed locations all over the US, were first intentionally infected with Ebola by Obama himself.

i heard that obama actually crafted this entire scheme as a toddler while living in kenya. utter genius i tell you.

[SMOKE 1,426]

Rumor has it that all of those illegal children who were moved to undisclosed locations all over the US, were first intentionally infected with Ebola by Obama himself.

I heard it was the Enterovirus D-68

[decocker 7,198]

I heard it was the Enterovirus D-68

i think that's just one of michelle's side projects. something to do with swapping out all public schools' vending machines with paralysis and death..

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Awesome to see the Right Wing echo chamber at work once again. Government is too big! Too intrusive! Obama wants total control of everyones private lives!

Oh wait! Obama is not taking enough invasive control over private lives by removing a process for mass quarantine (perfect method for dictatorial control of the masses) because he wants everyone to be killed by Ebola.

Peanut butter and stone ground mustard sandwich anyone?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Awesome to see the Right Wing echo chamber at work once again. Government is too big! Too intrusive! Obama wants total control of everyones private lives!

Oh wait! Obama is not taking enough invasive control over private lives by removing a process for mass quarantine (perfect method for dictatorial control of the masses) because he wants everyone to be killed by Ebola.

Peanut butter and stone ground mustard sandwich anyone?

Imagine there was a mass quarantine. We'd be reading about FEMA concentration camps.

[UncleBeer 244]

Is it possible to have mass hysteria with just a single person?

Incompetent government + corrupt elite = disaster

Not only do I disagree with the constant stream of soothing and complacent rhetoric from Dr. Zeke’s friends in government and media. I also believe it is entirely rational to fear the possibility of a major Ebola outbreak, of a threat to the president and his family, of jihadists crossing the border, of a large-scale European or Asian war, of nuclear proliferation, of terrorists detonating a weapon of mass destruction. These dangers are real, and pressing, and though the probability of their occurrence is not high, it is amplified by the staggering incompetence and failure and misplaced priorities of the U.S. government. It is not Ebola I am afraid of. It is our government’s ability to deal with Ebola.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yi ah fascism!

[Ban Hammer 13,666]

Awesome to see the Right Wing echo chamber at work once again.

usa today is now right wing?