Comment on [Link] Forty Days

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 01:50:56 GMT

This is classic costless analysis. A quarantine would have prevented some transmissions of the disease, but would have severely limited the life quality of those quarantined.

Agreed that there are costs, but 35 to 1. If you're not categorically opposed to quarantine, that probably makes it on cost-benefit terms.

It would also have made it more difficult to detect HIV (if having HIV means compulsory quarantine, then if I suspect I have the disease I am less likely to get tested).

This is solved by compulsory testing.

"What gives the government the moral right to imprison people on grounds of public health?"

I think this has been seen as solidly the right move for centuries, and I think the fact that this is in question is a sign of how rare epidemics are, not of moral progress.

How about instead of quarantine, we had instead tattooed all HIV sufferers across the forehead?

The actual suggestion at the time was to tattoo them somewhere private- so that only potential sexual partners would be communicated of the risk.

Discuss