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Comment by john61 | Hacker News Reader

Why should a democracy not be able the enforce a city-scale quarantine effectively? Italy did it on a smaller scale in no time yesterday. I do not see why this should not work for example for Milano too.

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I'm unsure how this would work in the US though. Everyone being on at-will employment, if you're sick you still have to go to work and spread the disease, otherwise your employer can fire you.

Most employers would rather you don't spread disease to everyone you come in contact with. It's pretty rare to find someone with zero sick days

Most software adjacent employers maybe. Service industry would rather have you sneezing into customer's food (as long as the health inspector isn't currently there) than have to reconfigure the schedule.

In California people are guaranteed 3 days. That’s not much when dealing with a flu-like illness. Additionally, it gives employers the right to cap the number accrued to 6 days.

My employer resets sick days to 0 at the beginning of the year, and you have to accrue them over time. I was sick very early in January and they were unhappy about it.

One problem is getting anyone to accept beds for quarantined patients anywhere near them. A plan to use an existing, mostly unused facility in the middle of a golf course is being opposed by some residents of Costa Mesa.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/02/where-should-...

I suppose we can put them onto military bases.

Edit: Oh, you said city scale. Well, I’ll leave this up anyway.

> Why should a democracy not be able the enforce a city-scale quarantine effectively?

Because decision making here is less centralized. People have rights, and they will agitate about them. It's not clear where the governmental authority to quarantine an entire city would come from in say, the US. It might be constitutionally challenged, people would get mad and sue. None of that happens in China.

According to Wikipedia the authority comes from H.R. 5122 signed into law by G.W. Bush in 2006, which “gave the president the power to declare martial law and to take command of the National Guard units of each state without the consent of state governors.”

That is why every nation has Emergency Provision Acts.

Also, Why should not officials in a democracy be unable to feed deceptive information to their superiors? There was a case in India, where the govt knew there were cases of Zica, but it suppressed the reports[1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40081524

Would it work for Chicago, Austin, not to mention New York?

Milan has a metropolitan population of 7.2 million, not far behind Chicago and well ahead of Austin.

Enforcing quarantine in New York would be very difficult, not least because it's in the middle of a continuous urban agglomeration between DC and Boston with no hard boundaries.

Ban all traffic across the George Washington, Bayonne, Goethals, Outerbridge, Lincoln, and Holland tunnels, as well as cutting off the Hudson River rail tunnels. Next, set up checkpoints on all roads accessing or crossing I-287. Ban all ferries to or from Manhattan and Long Island. Shutdown LGA and JFK.

You now have a quarantine zone separating New York City, Long Island, and some of the nearby cities in New York from the rest of the country. The Hudson River provides a pretty decent barrier to travel along the NEC. The Delaware, Potomac, and Susquehanna also provides some barriers, but enforcing quarantine barriers to inland travel is much more difficult (unless you're cutting off the Delmarva entirely).

This is pretty much a useless quarantine given what we know about COVID-19. Millions of people in Northern New Jersey and north of 287 travel into the center of New York every day, so there's no way you would catch everyone exposed in Manhattan that way given COVID-19's 14-day incubation (and some think it's even longer). The northern and western segments of the metropolitan area would be far harder to secure.

and look how well that worked out in the stand (by stephen king).

why not?

Because Americans might not tolerate being quarantined.

They prefer to die instead?

They prefer to run away from those that are ill to save themselves, and might not have enough concern for those that they themselves might infect.

Well in Italy the Police is securing the quarantined regions and the military is standby.

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