I read an apocalyptic novel a few months ago. It was placed in the USA, and the core assumption of the novel was that practically every agency in the federal government had armed troops. After sufficient build-up of these forces, one day the President took advantage of some crisis or other to declare martial law. Maybe this was inspired by the fact that lots of unlikely federal agencies do, in fact, have their own armed forces. Some of the stranger ones are: Dept. of Education, Food and Drug Administration, Internal Revenue Service and Post Office.

It was just a story, of course. Though one does wonder just why the Dept. of Education needs guns.

So now comes the CDC, proposing a new regulation. For those of you who are Americans, the CDC is accepting comments until October 14th. Here are some interesting excerpts:

The CDC "may promulgate regulations that provide for the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a quarantinable communicable disease in a qualifying stage."

Understandable, quarantine people who are infectious. By force, if necessary. Only, it continues:

"a 'qualifying stage' means that the communicable disease is in 'a precommunicable stage, if the disease would be likely to cause a public health emergency if transmitted to other individuals' or "a communicable stage."

So, non-infectious people, but still infected? Well, not exactly...

"CDC defines precommunicable stage to mean the stage beginning upon an individual's earliest opportunity for exposure to an infectious agent"

[Continues...]