With more and more cases of the coronavirus coming to light, and more deaths occurring in the United States, the likelihood that many more Americans will face medical quarantines is growing every day. But quarantines aren’t costless, they take both time and money to execute. So who will end up paying for them?
That question becomes even more important when it comes to mandatory quarantines. If you’re ordered by the government into a quarantine, you likely aren’t going to be able to continue working, so you’re losing income. You’ll have to be housed and fed, which costs money. You’ll be looked over by medical personnel, who will need to be paid. So who pays those bills? Who makes up your lost salary? What happens if you lose your job?
Those are all tough questions, with no real answers. So far, American citizens evacuated from China have found that they’re being required to pay a significant amount of the bills themselves. But for Americans here at home, who pays their bills? If you’re forced into a quarantine, even if you haven’t been infected with the virus, shouldn’t the government that’s ordering the quarantine pay your bills? That would only seem fair and just. Why should you be forced to pay thousands of dollars for healthcare that you don’t want?
Let’s remember, too, that the coronavirus isn’t the second coming of the Black Death. We’re talking about a serious cold that can cause fatal pneumonia in older, unhealthy, and immunocompromised patients. In other words, it’s the common cold with a slightly higher fatality rate. We’ve all known or heard of people who died after contracting a cold, due to complications from pneumonia. We also know that the flu kills more people every year than this coronavirus likely ever will.
So this talk of quarantines to stop the spread of this virus has less to do with actual concern for stopping a fatal disease, and more to do with government efforts at exerting control. If the government can force quarantines for something this immaterial, there’s nothing it can’t quarantine over. And that’s the whole point, expanding the scope of government intervention and control over our lives and setting a precedent that will be called upon in the future. Everything the government does with regard to the coronavirus needs to be scrutinized, and every statement made has to be taken with a big grain of salt.
