With the first confirmed positive tests of the coronavirus in the United States, public health officials are keeping a close watch on its progression.
The virus, which broke out in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in mid-December, had infected thousands of people at a skyrocketing rate by the end of January, killing more than 100. Meanwhile, the virus has begun to appear in other countries. In the U.S., more than 100 patients in 26 states were being evaluated as of Jan. 27, five of them testing positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The risk of infection in the U.S. is low, at least for now, but the CDC is keeping close watch and screening passengers arriving from China.
Of course, we hope that public health officials will be able to contain it. But what if the infections dramatically increase? What power does the government have to impose quarantines or other restrictions to limit the spread of disease? The answer, which should come as no surprise, is: A lot.
Its powers are spelled out in the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The section titled "Regulations to control communicable diseases" hands the power to the Surgeon General to take whatever actions are necessary to limit the spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the U.S. or from state to state within the U.S.
If a person is suspected of being infected, they may be apprehended and examined. If they are found to be infected, they can be indefinitely detained in relative isolation. And if groups are thought to have been exposed to communicable disease, they may be quarantined.
In addition, states have the ability to protect people within their borders, under their police power functions. But if the measures taken by state health authorities are insufficient to prevent the spread of the disease, the CDC has the power to step in and order any isolation and quarantines deemed necessary.
In China, authorities are scrambling to contain the virus by imposing an extraordinary quarantine. Initially, the government locked down the entire city of Wuhan and its 11 million inhabitants. By Jan. 25, however, 11 more cities and about 40 million more people were added to the quarantine. The images that we've seen from the quarantined areas — empty streets, stores, public-transit stations — have indeed been eerie.
The questions on many Americans' minds, of course, are: Could that happen here? How serious is the threat in the U.S.?
Nobody really knows.
The CDC says the risk in the U.S. is low, and the World Health Organization is also refraining from sounding alarm bells. WHO's director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that while China is experiencing an emergency, "it has not yet become a global health emergency."
The problem is that we still don't know how easily the virus is spread from person to person, and we don't know how deadly it is.
It could be no more deadly than season flu. But might it become a "global health emergency"?
Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says the likelihood of a full-blown pandemic is low. But other experts are voicing concern. "If it's not contained shortly," said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, "I think we're looking at a pandemic."
As long as the word "pandemic" is being bandied about, it's probably worth mentioning the last one we had: The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed about 670,000 Americans. Worldwide, the death toll was between 50 million and 100 million.
The CDC and WHO are issuing assurances, at least for now. But Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, tweeted on Jan. 26 that countries should make plans now for the possibility that the virus cannot be contained.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out on Jan. 28 that the coronavirus carries an additional threat: panic and fear-mongering.
"Disproportionate hysteria and exaggerated fear" tend to accompany outbreaks of infectious diseases, the ACLU said, recalling the overreactions to the 2009 "swine flu" virus that turned out to be a normal flu strain.
In addition, the ACLU warned that politicians may see the threat of a foreign-origin virus as an opportunity to target and stigmatize vulnerable populations.
For now, it's safe to say we just don't know what the threat might be. So it's best to keep calm and let the scientists and the public health professionals do their thing.
My sister's ex-husband sold their house, taking all of the proceeds. They had a Property Settlement Agreement that stated that he would have to split the proceeds equally if the house was ever sold.
She took him to Court and he is to pay "at least $100.00 a month". The payments are becoming "few and far between" lately. Is there a way to have this debt "acquisitioned" by someone that would pay her a lump sum in exchange for the payments going directly to them from now on?
Thank you.
I was always the primary caretaker of my two children ages 3 and 6 as a stay at home mother. We were ignorred and neglected by my ex husband who never spoke to us. I filed for a divorce and moved out of state with the children from Louisiana to Texas. My ex husband agreed that they be with me, he cosigned my lease. I continued to make every effort possible to get him to develope a relationship with them by calling daily, and driving them to and from his state every month. He would not speak to them on the phone, and would pawn them off onto the grandmother when they visited him. My ex husband finaly answered the divorce and filed for full custody a year and a half later on the grounds that I moved in with my boyfriend and became pregnant, and my boyfriend was showing the children much needed attention and positave role model. I was threatened into signing them over to him outside of court for the school year. Since they have moved in with him three months ago, he has been underminding my relationship with them, taken all my rights away, refusing to communicate with me about them at all, refusing me my visitation rights, ignorring and neglecting the children causing severe psychological, mental, emotional and physical health impact on them. He has moved in a married woman and her four children into his three bedroom home, sleeping four kids in a room. My son started kintergarden and is doing poorly and showing bad conduct. He is starving through the day because my ex refuses to pack his lunch or feed him breakfast. They are constantly sick and uncared for, pawned off onto the grandmother despite her obssessive borderline incestious behaviour with them. They have been left in the car alone, lost in public, and told I abandoned them and I do not love them. My ex husband and his girlfriend, and the grandmother badmouth me in front of them. And on the events that I DO see my children, they cry to come home with me.
I still live out of state, have been remarried, they love my husband and know him well, they both wish to stay with us. I also have a 9 month old baby with my husband. Our community, schools, economy, home standartd of living, and parental support here is far superior and better for them than living with my ex husband.
Is this good enough to motion a change of custody to have them here with me and my husband for the school year? Or do you think the courts will throw my case out and just issue more visitation for me? I am also afraid he will respond, suing me for child support even though his household income is double mine and I do not work.
Can seller back out of home sale contract?
Is there any way for a seller to change
their mind and back out of a contract to
sell a home?