The purpose of posting the article was to point out that US laws on public health and quarantine are broad and give authorities wide latitude in responding to disease. You quoted from the advocacy parts of the article that argue quarantine powers are too broad and therefore at risk of abuse. What you did not quote is the broad summary of quarantine measures and confinement of even people who are not sick that precedes that advocacy. If you would read that part, you'll see that actually the legal powers between the UK/Australia/USA when it comes to quarantine and lock down are not that different.
I have read the whole thing several times, De Selby. I'm not convinced you read it once.
Again, the actual quarantine abilities referenced in that article do not demonstrate or even hint at the authority to do anything like Australian-style lockdowns. Pointing out that they locked someone with TB up or used to make ships stay in quarantine prior to disembarking or have the authority to issue temporary 3 day individual quarantines subject to review does not automatically extrapolate to: "CLOSE BUSINESSES, ORDER PEOPLE TO STAY IN THEIR HOMES, FINE PEOPLE WHO GO OUTSIDE, ARREST PEOPLE WHO EVEN TALK ABOUT PEACEABLY ASSEMBLING!"
Of course, in the US we would have to add "BUT RIOTS ARE PROBABLY OKAY AS LONG AS THE RIOTERS ARE SUFFICIENTLY WOKE."
I'm not sure why you expected it to give medical advice about measures that are responsive to disease - for that you have real life examples where lockdowns have eliminated covid.
Dude, we are right back around to where we started. I know that a totalitarian regime without US-style guarantees of civil rights or due process can lock their country down to the point of temporarily excluding COVID (until it gets in again and then they have to lock down again). I'm saying that I don't like totalitarian regimes with the power to do stuff like that. Such a system gives you the warm fuzzies. Great. I'm very glad you have been able to emigrate to a country whose outlook on civil rights reflects your own and hope you are able to receive citizenship there.
Okay, well please cite the flu year you're referring to that flu overwhelmed hospitals in the USA. I don't think you're correct that a "bad flu year" whatever that means overwhelms US hospitals.
If you believe the hospitals, 2017-2018 is nice and recent, but there have certainly been worse years than that.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden-averted/2017-2018.htmI can't find anything besides the 1918 pandemic that comparable in effect to what's happening now, so if you could please refer me to an example of a "bad flu year" I'll go through it and check hospitalisation and medical impact data.
I've never claimed that bad flu years are comparable to COVID. COVID is worse, no doubt. The point is that
you set your personal bar for Australia-style universal and repeated lockdowns and settling for nothing less than the local elimination of a given disease at "overwhelms hospital capacity". Based on your own words a bad flu season should result in total lockdowns. Now you're backpedaling and saying "oh, oh, but that's not as bad as COVID".
So are these points about whether lockdowns stop covid? Or whether they're justified?
I was trying to steelman your position and give it all the benefit of the doubt possible. The impact on the aboriginal community was the very best argument I had seen in favor of the Australia lockdowns, albeit one you had not brought up. If there is a real risk that COVID could wipe out, or nearly wipe out an entire community because of that community's inherent lack of developed immunity to then I'd certainly understand the drive to protect that community - if still not necessarily agreeing with the morality of imprisoning a people to protect them.
If it were in fact the case that Australia was locking down generally to protect the aboriginal community then I would expect them to be at the tip of the spear when it comes to vaccine distribution. You know, like how the elderly were given the first crack at getting the vaccine when quantities were low. The fact that they are the least COVID vaccinated group in Australia, and that the vaccines assigned to aboriginal communities are meted out so sparingly gives lie to that argument.
