A Coronavirus Quarantine in America Could Be a Giant Legal Mess

For observers in the United States, it was shocking enough when, in January, the Chinese government effectively sealed off Wuhan, larger in population than New York City. Officials shut down public transportation and blocked highways, confining residents and visitors alike in an attempt to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.

But in the weeks since, the measures have become more drastic still. The quarantine-style lockdown has since been extended to include more than 50 million people elsewhere in China. Officials have ordered door-to-door checks in Wuhan to round up the infected for further isolation. Anyone who hides infections, one official said, “will be forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame.”

Putting aside the question of whether such radical measures are even effective, China’s government generally has much more authoritarian control over its population than the American government has over its. If a fast-spreading, deadly epidemic should threaten the United States, could to implement public-health measures to stop an epidemic, as the Americans on the Diamond Cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, are now learning. , they were told on Saturday that following their two-week quarantine aboard the ship they would face an additional two-week quarantine back in the United States.