Coronavirus: Martial Law Expansion and General Power Grab Push via Quarantine Festival of Fear (PapersPlease, etc)

[grarpamp]

https://papersplease.org/wp/2020/01/31/can-quarantine-orders-restrict-travel-and-movement/
https://papersplease.org/wp/2016/10/14/cdc-proposes-martial-law-in-the-guise-of-medical-quarantine/

http://www.scscourt.org/self_help/probate/quarantine.shtml
https://ktla.com/2020/01/30/quarantine-ordered-for-passenger-who-tried-to-leave-march-air-reserve-base-after-flight-from-china/
https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2017/06/01/emergency-preparedness-is-quarantine-all-we-have-to-offer/
https://ktla.com/2020/01/28/flight-from-wuhan-china-to-land-at-ontario-international-airport-amid-coronavirus-concerns/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/coronavirus-quarantine-cruise-international-panic.html
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/t0129-cdc-telebriefing-2019-novel-coronavirus.html
https://www.courthousenews.com/us-says-dont-go-to-china-as-virus-deaths-top-200/
https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-woman-avoided-airport-tests-travel-france-2020-1
https://www.pe.com/2020/01/30/coronavirus-evacuee-quarantined-at-march-air-reserve-base-in-riverside-county/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338900711_6_Rejecting_Quarantine_A_Frozen-in-Time_Reaction_to_Disease
https://www.rivcoph.org/Portals/0/Coronavirus%20update%201.30.20.pdf
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/they-can-leave-cdc-wont-quarantine-195-americans-flown-home-from-epicenter-of-coronavirus

How might the coronavirus change our world?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251388

"
In Shanghai (pop. 24M), IR scanning is also required to drive into the
city and to enter the subway. The paper says that anyone with a high
temperature is held in a quarantine area for hospital pickup.
In my district at least, an IR scan is also required to enter shopping
malls, and at least some apartment complexes (including mine).
This morning the nearest Starbucks started requiring IR scan.
You have to register with the pharmacy in order to buy fever medicine.
"


"
Can “quarantine” orders restrict travel and movement?

Imagine that you are a US citizen living or traveling overseas, and
find yourself in a place of possible danger. The US government, as
part of its “services” to US citizens abroad, offers to charter a
plane to evacuate US citizens and repatriate them to the US, and you
agree to pay a pro-rated share of the cost of the flight back to a US
gateway airport, from which you are told you will be free to proceed
to your home or to wherever else you choose to go.

But the flight, which was scheduled to take you to San Francisco
International Airport, is diverted first to Ontario [CA] Airport and
then to an Air Force Reserve Base in the Mojave Desert, where
passengers are confined in a  cordoned-off section of the base. When
one of you tries to leave, they are detained by the authorities.

This is what has happened to 195 US citizens “evacuated” from Wuhan, China.

Have they been “rescued” by their government? Or have they been kidnapped?

Questions are already being raised about this and other incidents of
individual and mass “quarantines”.  Some have questioned the medical
argument for quarantine orders, while others have suggested that the
current panic reflects ethnic and national bigotry.

Our particular concern is — as it has been for many years, and as it
has been for other legal experts who have criticized the Federal
quarantine regulations — with the legal basis and procedures for
restricting the right to freedom of movement, extrajudicially, on
ostensibly medical grounds, rather than  relying on existing legal
mechanisms for the issuance by judges of temporary restraining orders
or injunctions restricting individuals’ movements.

Unfortunately, US authorities, especially the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), have tried to avoid acknowledging the
scope of the authority they claim, or giving either the public or
specifically affected individuals clear notice of their rights.
Instead, as in other recent incidents of quarantine orders, they have
tried to avoid any judicial review of their actions by persuading
individuals to waive their rights, just as police avoid judicial
review of other types of detentions, searches, and interrogations by
intimidating members of the public into giving “consent”.

KTLA television reports that “None of the passengers showed signs of
the illness after being evacuated from the epicenter of the deadly
coronavirus outbreak. However, they agreed to stay voluntarily,
according to Dr. Chris Braden of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.”

The CDC claim that passengers “agreed to stay voluntarily” seems to be
contradicted by other facts reported in the same news story:

    One of the Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China… has been placed
under quarantine after trying to leave March Air Reserve Base, where a
chartered flight landed the previous day, Riverside County health
officials said Thursday. As a result, the traveler will be required to
“stay for the entire incubation period or until otherwise cleared,”
according to a statement from the agency. The incubation period is two
weeks.

According to the Associated Press:

    After the plane chartered by the U.S. government arrived at the
base Wednesday with the evacuees from the Chinese city of Wuhan,
federal officials dodged questions from reporters on whether people
would be allowed to leave before a three-day testing and monitoring
period was up.

And the Washington Examiner reported that:

    When pressed, Rear Adm. Dr. Nancy Knight, the director of the
CDC’s Division of Global Health Protection, confirmed the passengers
could leave at their own will, as they are not being quarantined.

    “They can leave, however, they are sitting in the middle of a
military base,” Knight said. “Any discussion around departure would be
just that.”

The actual scope of the powers claimed by the CDC is spelled out in
regulations that were issued in January 2017, which we described at
the time they were proposed as giving CDC employees “sweeping
martial-law powers of warrantless search, interrogation, tracking of
movements, arrest, and extrajudicial mass detention (at the detainees’
own expense!) of individuals or entire groups of unlimited numbers of
people for unlimited periods of time.”

According to the formal comments we submitted to the CDC:

    The CDC’s proposal completely ignores existing medical and legal
procedures for involuntary commitment of individuals determined to
constitute a danger to themselves or others….

    The proposed rules would allow any designated CDC “official” to
issue, “A Federal order authorizing quarantine, isolation, or
conditional release” of an “individual or group”. Violation of such an
order would be subject to criminal penalties.

    The proposed rules would place no limits on:

        the size of the group subject to such an order;
        the duration of such “quarantine or isolation” (detention) or
“conditional release” (restrictions on movement, assembly, and/or
other liberties); or
        which CDC officials could be designated as authorized to issue
such orders, or the medical, legal, or adjudicatory qualifications of
such officials.

    The only review of such an order provided by the proposed rules
would be a “medical review” by a single “physician, nurse
practitioner, or similar medical professional”. This review would be
limited to “ascertaining whether the CDC has a reasonable belief that
the individual is infected with a quarantinable communicable disease
in a qualifying stage,” and would exclude any consideration of legal
or other objections to the order. An unlimited number of such reviews
could be consolidated in a single proceeding before a single reviewer.
An indigent detainee could be “represented” before the reviewer by a
“medical representative”, but that “representative” would be appointed
by the CDC, and would be a “physician, nurse practitioner, or similar
medical professional”, not an attorney.

    There are no provisions in the proposed rules for access of
detainees to legal counsel, representation of detainees by retained or
appointed counsel, confrontation or cross-examination of witnesses,
compulsory process for obtaining evidence or testimony, independence
of the reviewer from the initial decision-maker, judicial review, or
any other aspect of due process.

    So the lowliest single CDC employee, subject only to review on an
exclusively medical basis by a single reviewer employed by the same
agency and with qualifications “similar” to those of a nurse
practitioner, could order the extrajudicial arrest and detention for
an unlimited duration of a “group” defined in any manner and including
an unlimited number of individuals.

The CDC brushed off our objections and more than 15,000 other comments
from members of the public including public health organizations and
unions representing airline flight attendants. The proposed rules were
finalized with only minimal changes. The final rule was modified
slightly, in response to our objections, to allow a detainee to be
represented by a lawyer at the kangaroo-court CDC “medical review”,
but the final rules promulgated in 2017 and in force today still make
no provision for consideration of legal objections in the “medical
review”, or for judicial review of CDC “quarantine” orders.

This is in notable contrast to quarantine orders issued by state and
local authorities under California law, or the laws of other states,
which are subject to explicit procedures for judicial review. The CDC
regulations also entirely ignore and bypass existing legal procedures
for involuntary commitment and/or involuntary treatment of persons
determined to pose a danger to themselves or others, which are also
subject to judicial review.

The CDC rules also require airlines to provide passenger information
to the CDC on demand, and allow the CDC to enter lists of individual
names, categories, and/or algorithmic criteria into the “no-fly” rule
set used by the TSA and CBP  to decide on issuance of Boarding Pass
Printing Results sent to airlines to determine who is, and who is not,
allowed to fly.

It appears that the CDC is eager to avoid judicial review of these
rules, and has avoided issuing Federal quarantine orders in favor of
getting local officials to order the detention of individuals who
don’t “voluntarily” agree to Federal “requests”.

Whatever the legitimacy of current concerns about coronavirus, the
potential for abuse of such sweeping, extrajudicial CDC powers appears
great. Please let us know if you hear of any legal challenges to
Federal “quarantine” restrictions or “no board” orders.
"