Massachusetts Pandemic Powers: Quarantine for Mental Illness?

To Domenico Bettinelli @ BettNet (re: your post "Massachusetts is NOT forcing vaccines on you"):

OK, Domenico. You make the point that mandatory vaccination is not in bill S2028, and you’re right on the face of it. You say the “rumor” about the bill’s dangers is unfounded. But you obviously have a lot of unwarranted faith in the trustworthiness of our government and medical professionals.

You’re correct that bill S2028 reads:

An individual who is unable or unwilling to submit to vaccination or treatment shall not be required to submit to such procedures but may be isolated or quarantined pursuant to section 96 of chapter 111 if his or her refusal poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health, as determined by the commissioner, or a local public health authority operating within its jurisdiction. (S2028, lines 409-414.)

Note that “serious danger to public health” remains undefined. And what’s the cut off time on detention? The bill does state that isolation would be only for the period of communicability, and quarantine would be for the usual incubation period of the disease. Individuals who refuse testing or decontamination are subject to isolation or quarantine:

When the commissioner or a local public health authority within its jurisdiction reasonably believes that a person may have been exposed to a disease or condition that poses a threat to the public health ...[they] may detain the person for as long as may be reasonably necessary for the commissioner or the local public health authority, to convey information to the person regarding the disease or condition and to obtain contact information ... (S2028, lines 432-439.)
An order for isolation or quarantine may include any individual who is unwilling or unable to undergo vaccination, precautionary prophylaxis, medical treatment, decontamination, medical examinations, tests, or specimen collection and whose refusal of one or more of these measures poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health. (Lines 464-469.)


This is somewhat vague: no definitions for “reasonably” or “condition that poses a threat to public health." Remember that that Gulag was populated with people like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who assuredly suffered from some “condition”. 

Have you ever heard of what happens in some pediatricians’ offices, when they talk young teenage girls into getting an HPV vaccine (when the wary mother is not present)? It's easy for an authority to pressure a reluctant patient who tries to refuse. Have you ever heard stories of what happens in psych wards, when they tell someone they’re “just doing a TB test” -- when in fact they’re planning to inject the distressed patient with who knows what?   (No, I’m not speaking first person.)

Now multiply this scenario by a thousand times given fear, panic, uncertainty and irrationality during an “emergency”, and mix in lack of transparency (or competence) from our public servants. Do you still think the newly needle-enabled EMT or dentist will follow the protocol in S2028 to the letter? Do you think a frightened individual who resists will be respected? And what happens when the resister is in forced quarantine?  Who’s in charge there? What is the state of mind of the forcibly quarantined citizen? (Line 475 does state, "Isolation and quarantine orders must utilize the least restrictive means necessary." But who gets to determine that?)

And of course we don't really know what's in those flu vaccines. So much for trusting the authorities.

S2028 even includes a provision “to care for any emerging mental health or crisis counseling needs that individuals may exhibit,” (all terms and places of treatment undefined) -- with their "permission" of course. Might a person resisting the authorities’ entry into his premises be determined to suffer from “emerging mental health or crisis counseling needs”? And when the authorities “exercise ... their powers ... over facilities including but not limited to communications devices” and a person can’t call his lawyer, what then? Well, then we’ve arrived at a police state, and it doesn’t matter that the new law said no one can be vaccinated against his will. The individual's will no longer counts. There’s only the power of the state.

C’mon Domenico. You’re way too trusting. The patriots have come up with the word “sheeple” for a reason.

Let’s end with this. Who gets to define the governing terms in the law? Current Massachusetts law Ch. 111, section 6 gives this power to the Commissioner of Public Health:

Power to define diseases deemed dangerous to public health; control and prevention
Section 6. The department shall have the power to define, and shall from time to time define, what diseases shall be deemed to be dangerous to the public health, and shall make such rules and regulations consistent with law for the control and prevention of such diseases as it deems advisable for the protection of the public health. 

And if S2028 is passed, it would add after the word “diseases” (in lines 2 and 5) above: “injuries, health conditions, and threats to health.” All to be defined ad hoc by an unelected official (the Public Health Commissioner), possibly in time of crisis.

And as the statists have said, never let a crisis go to waste!

Kennedy Funeral Mass a "Scandal" Says Catholic Action League of Mass.

We have no comment upon the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. (If you can't say anything good ...) But we are eager to share this press release from the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts:

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: C. J. DOYLE (781) 251-9739

SCANDAL AT MISSION CHURCH IN BOSTON

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today decried the scandal which occurred this morning at Boston's most historic Catholic shrine --- the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, known as Mission Church --- where a Mass of Christian Burial was used to “celebrate the life” of one of America's most notorious opponents of Catholic morality, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Senator Kennedy fought for more than three decades to keep the killing of pre-born children legal and unrestricted in the United States.

Surgical abortion has claimed more than fifty-one million human lives since 1973. The Catholic religion defines abortion as an “abominable crime”.

President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy, in which he alluded to Kennedy's support for gay rights. One of the Prayers of the Faithful was a petition to end divisions “between gays and straights”.

Ecclesial participants included Rev. Raymond Collins, Rector of the Basilica; Rev. Mark Hession, Kennedy’s parish priest from Our Lady of Victories Church in Centerville on Cape Cod; Rev. J. Donald Monan, Chancellor of Boston College; and Sean Cardinal O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, who thanked President Obama for his words and his presence. Both the homilist, Fr. Hession, and Cardinal O'Malley suggested that the late senator had found eternal salvation.

The Catholic Action League called the event “a tragic example of the Church’s willingness to surrender to the culture, and serve Caesar rather than Christ”.

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle stated: “Senator Kennedy supported legal abortion, partial-birth abortion, the public funding of Medicaid abortions, embryonic stem cell research, birth control, federal family planning programs, and so-called emergency contraception. He defended Roe v. Wade, endorsed the proposed Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), and opposed both the Human Life Amendment and the Hyde Amendment. Kennedy maintained a 100% rating from both NARAL and Planned Parenthood. In 1993, he received the Kenneth Edelin Award from Planned Parenthood, and in 2000 received the Champions of Choice Award from NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts at the hands of the same Dr. Kenneth Edelin, the infamous abortionist.”

During his 1994 reelection campaign, Kennedy said ‘I wear as a badge of honor my opposition to the anti-choicers’. His successful obstruction of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 effectively prevented the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Beyond his specific positions on human life issues, Senator Kennedy, along with the late Congressman Robert Drinan, provided the cover and the example for two generations of Catholic politicians to defect from Church teaching on the sanctity of innocent human life.”

“No rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica. This morning's spectacle is evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United States. The right to life will never be recognized by secular society if it is not first vindicated and consistently upheld within the institutions of the Church itself.”