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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

I have a massive issue with restraining people who have committed no crimes.

Just in way of an example, what evidence do we have that she committed a crime (outside of avoiding treatment, and then avoiding imo illegal detention)?

As far as I see it’s been 2-3 years she’s been out in public, likely longer with TB. Do we have any evidence it spread to others?

I’m highly skeptical of the science around TB because of cases like this.

We have laws that let people commit suicide, we sell alcohol (a known toxin), and why do we care if someone’s sick and doesn’t want treatment?

To put another way, I like to the think of the government as “we the people”. Would I be willing to restrain someone at gun point for being sick? Nah, that’s crazy.

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> I’m highly skeptical of the science around TB because of cases like this.

This is a legal / law-enforcement story. How does is possibly affect your views on the science.

> We have laws that let people commit suicide, we sell alcohol (a known toxin), and why do we care if someone’s sick and doesn’t want treatment?

None of those are communicable, as you know.

> To put another way, I like to the think of the government as “we the people”. Would I be willing to restrain someone at gun point for being sick? Nah, that’s crazy.

It really sounds like you're questioning the communicability of tuberculosis...

> This is a legal / law-enforcement story. How does is possibly affect your views on the science.

No evidence of spread was presented. Meaning, although there’s claims this spreads easily, no one appears to have caught it in years? Unless there’s something weird going on, you’d think they’d be pointing out all the people she got sick

We don't have to have evidence that she spread it to anyone to know that TB is easily spreadable and to know that she was doing things that can spread it.

This is why we have laws against drunk driving, rather than waiting until after a drunk driver hits someone. For exactly the same reason, courts do have the right to order people confined when they present a serious risk of contagion, rather than first demanding proof of contagion.

She is literally a walking biohazard. She got her due process, lost, and then ignored the court order. From the article it sounds like she can still refuse treatment but she can't keep being a risk to the public.

Edit: And to your point about "no crime," reckless endangerment is a crime. Defying court orders is a crime.

Nobody cares if she runs off to a national forest and disappears in the wild where she can't be around others to spread infection.

But to be around other people, knowing or should knowing that she is causing a high probability of harm to others IS a crime.

Such a high probability that in 2-3+ years there’s zero evidence she spread TB.

There’s a reason TB isn’t an issue any more… we have dramatically improved health, smoke dramatically less AND have effective antibiotics. TB kills how many people in the US? Oh right… less than strep, do we lock up people with strep? Of course not.

13 million people today in the US have latent TB. Effectively, their body fought it odd and isolated the bacteria. We don’t lock them up. What evidence do we have that this person has an active case AFTER 2-3 years?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/661344/tuberculosis-deat...

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tuberculosis/...

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/general/tb.ht...

There’s a reason TB isn’t an issue any more…

And, yet, an article from 3 days ago calls it a global health threat and notes that a million people die from it annually.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/5/30/23738607/tuberculosis...

There's now Antibiotic resistant TB and if we keep using antibiotics for TB were risking creating more AB resistant strains.

It's best if people don't get infected with it to begin with

Antibiotic resistant TB is exponentially scarier to me than COVID.

If her case was latent and she wasn't a danger of spreading the disease, my understanding is that her lungs wouldn't be so ravaged that they look like she has late stage lung cancer under an x-ray. And others have pointed out your 2-3 year number is weird and not terribly accurate as well.

The case is from 2021 (ruling Jan 2022) meaning her rejection of treatment had to be prior to that. She had to have TB even before that. It’s fair to assume she got it mid-2021 or earlier

ok so now that the minor disagreement about dates has been resolved, how about the major disagreement over evidence her disease is not latent?

If you read more about the case you'll see this isnt some principled stand about liberty or disagreement about the science of the disease but actually a mentally unwell person endangering themselves and others. You attempting to make a point about freedom on her back is, I might say, ghoulish.

I wouldn’t say ghoulish - I can fully understand the reaction, especially going solely off the linked article.

However, piecing together more of the case over time, it appears just as you said - very much not a case of individual liberty but one of genuine health concern.

By all accounts, it appears law enforcement has tried to allow this person her personal sovereignty in many ways while still keeping track of her to ensure she doesn’t endanger others.

That it got to the point it has, is not due to some authoritarian overreach, but rather due to a series of flagrantly contemptuous actions that were defying law enforcement and putting others at risk unnecessarily.

It's a crime to have unprotected sex with people if you know you have an STI and do not disclose it to your partner. The essence of this crime is that by purposefully exposing your partner to a serious illness, you are "assaulting" them. This is essentially what this lady is doing to the people she is breathing around.

We care because we spent centuries dying of TB and aren't interested in starting again. "Questioning the science" maybe makes you feel smart, but in this case you're also questioning the history as well as common sense.

> As far as I see it’s been 2-3 years she’s been out in public, likely longer with TB.

That's not what the article says. It says this:

    The woman's legal saga dates back to January
    2022, when the health department resorted to
    court orders to try to get her to treat her
    deadly infection—or at least prevent her from
    readily spreading it in the community. "The
    Local Health Officer ordered [the woman] to
    self-isolate and treat; which she declined to
    do. [The woman] has not complied with such
    efforts, has discontinued treatment and is
    unwilling to resume treatment or voluntarily
    self-isolate," court documents from January
    2022 read.

Failure to comply with a health officer's tuberculosis treatment orders is in fact a crime: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=70.28.033

Detention, isolation, quarantine, and treatment are all subject to due process and overseen by the courts.

The law linked makes no mention of TB. That's a nice blank check for a "health officer" to jail anyone while they wait for the courts. Was it used during the COVID lockdowns?

It doesn't mention TB itself because it references https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=70.28.031 which is about TB.

In fact both are sections of https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=70.28 titled "CONTROL OF TUBERCULOSIS".

For your reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tuberculosis

I wasn't scared of COVID but Antibiotic resistant TB scares the hell out of me.

TB is extremely dangerous, airborne, and if it's the antibiotic resistant type...completely incurable.

The worst thing about the overreaction to COVID is it made people lose trust in health authorities and right fully so.

But trust me AB resistant TB is scary shit.

It sounds like you'd be happy to let a zombie outbreak go untreated.

Your opinion differs from my State Law. I prefer the current Law because I don't get tuberculosis that way

This should be a crime, and she should be in prison for attempting to spread a deadly disease

> This should be a crime, and she should be in prison for attempting to spread a deadly disease

yeah and HIV positive people having sex are next!

Another person linked to the WA law that makes it possible to jail a person for being sick. I'm surprised laws like that are on the books.

> HIV positive people having sex

If you are under a treatment regime, and have an undetectable viral load it is basically impossible to spread HIV. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undetectable_%3D_Untransmitt...

People who have consciously had sex while not undetectable, and without disclosing their HIV status to their partners have been prosecuted for it. And rightly so in my opinion.

Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins.

Your kinda arguing my liberty ends when I catch a cold that scares you…

You see the problem?

Indefinitely detaining people without proving they hurt someone is not really something that’s supposed to be done.

In this case; there was no evidence presented that they spread TB. There are 13 million people with TB in the US and the vast vast majority aren’t undergoing treatment nor are they detained. It’s often in a dormant form, but even when it isn’t many many people go untreated.

This is why this case is a bit … much? I do get she had a trial, so there was due process, but im criticizing the judge here because the facts don’t back the judgement

Are you really arguing that an active TB infection isn't transmittable? TB is in fact the cause of 2.3% of all deaths worldwide.

Yes he is. He is and it's frightening.

TB is quite a bit more than just "a cold that scares us".

How many people do you want her to have the opportunity to infect while we wait for definitive proof that she was the source of infecting at least one of them?

> im criticizing the judge here because the facts don’t back the judgement

BS. Your false belief that TB isn't infectious and deadly is distorting your view of the judge and his ruling. You're wrong; the judge and the epidemiologists are right.

When someone's carelessness and disregard becomes a danger to others, yes. The mindset that TB isn't transmissible or a significant threat, when carrying it, yes that person is a threat to others. Continue dismissing, but it's a foolish take.

Yikes. You're on a fairly enlightened site on the internet, yet you're this stupid?

HN isn't that enlightened. Some of the dumbest takes I hope to ever see have been here.

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