Dannel Malloy, the governor of Connecticut, signed an order declaring a public health emergency. The order allows the state health commissioner to require quarantines and isolation for individuals who are infected with Ebola or who are believed to have been exposed to the virus, in an effort to fight the disease even though there are no suspected cases in the state.
“We are taking this action today to ensure that we are prepared, in advance, to deal with any identified cases in which someone has been exposed to the virus or, worst case, infected,” Malloy said “[I]t is essential to be prepared and we need to have the authorities in place that will allow us to move quickly to protect public health, if and when that becomes necessary.”
Most U.S. states and the federal government have laws on the books giving them the authority to detain and quarantine individuals with a communicable disease.
In essence, the Connecticut order amounts to medical marshal law. If there are any signs of respiratory illness or other related symptoms of disease in an individual or group of individuals, they can be forcefully isolated without appeal or due process.
While hardly anyone would disagree with this process to protect against the spread of the deadly disease, the prophetic point is that fear drives the abrogation of liberty and constitutional rights, even in advance of the feared event. While being proactive is politically correct, it is a method that will increasingly be used in other arenas in which constitutional freedoms are suspended.
Jesus said that worry about the future, or fear of things that appear to be coming would cause men’s hearts to fail them. This strongly suggests that leaders of government would take pre-emptive action in anticipation of real or imagined emergencies. Such emergencies usually involved the suspension of rights, rightly or wrongly.
“Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things, which are coming on the earth…” Luke 21:26.