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by shiandow 33 days ago
Not only that, what is the point confining someone to prevent the spread of a disease about a quarter of the world is already infected with?

I suppose there could be reasons, but I don't know them.

2 comments

Some countries and jurisdictions still have laws that allow for the involuntary confinement of tuberculosis patients, I guess dating back to the times when tuberculosis was rampant in those countries? And most professionals seem to be okay with the policy:

https://theunion.org/news/is-involuntary-incarceration-of-tb...

>17% said that, as a matter of principle, the involuntary incarceration of TB patients was inappropriate on any grounds.

>Regionally, members from Europe Region had the highest percentage of respondents objecting to the policy as a matter of principle (26.2%) while the North America Region had the lowest (3%).

The emergence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in the 1990s is probably one of the reasons:

>Respondents most strongly supported the policy of incarceration for patients known to have multidrug-resistant TB (49.7%)

Because it’s a nasty disease, and they’d like to prevent its spread. A quarter of the world may have TB, but there are only like 10,000 cases in the US every year