In contrast to the U.S. citizens who may have been exposed to the coronavirus, transported by the U.S. from China to U.S. military bases in California, willingly coming to isolation units and then being given humane care to ensure recovery, (and speaking gratefully for it) China is conducting mass arrests of anyone exposed to the coronavirus and dragging them to camps. According to the Daily Mail:

Officials in protective suits are seen holding onto two people by their arms before a third more resistive man is picked up from the floor and carried away in one shocking clip shared online. The footage, filmed in Wuhan, comes after China's Vice Premier Sun Chunlan called on a 'people's war' against the fast-spreading epidemic. Last week the country's central government ordered the city - which is the epicentre of the virus - to round up all suspected patients as well as their close contacts in mass quarantine camps.

You can see now why the exposed Americans have been so grateful to have been transported from Wuhan to here.

Video shared on social media show white-clad goons in hazmat suits dragging people by force, literally kicking and screaming, and tossing them in big pens together to wait it out. They're treated like livestock, like videos of New Zealand farmers grabbing and tossing sheep for the shearing.

Another video of #China residents going very happily admitting themselves at the new state of the art hospital in #Wuhan. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Everything is under control, right? #coronaviruspic.twitter.com/cfeXcGE9hs — Montana🕊Agent Applebutt (@AgentApplebutt2) February 8, 2020

It's disturbing, because after all, these are sick people who've done nothing wrong, yet they're being treated like criminals.

Of course, it's true there is a deadly epidemic in China that has killed more than 700 people. It's also true that victims who've been exposed do need to be moved to isolation units. There is a state interest in this, particularly in light of China being internationally isolated as a result of the epidemic. It's also possible that some Chinese citizens, conditioned by socialism and dependent on the state for everything, don't take it upon themselves to spare other people from contamination. There's no civic culture in China.

One thing we do know, though, based on the videos, is that the Chinese don't trust their government with their care. That would explain the resistance. As people exposed to illness, they also have an interest in getting well, just as the Chinese state has an interest in ending the impact of the epidemic. These things should coincide but China doesn't have to make them coincide. Maybe it's easier to just get rid of people.

Who knows if these people will get care or a cure penned up together in camps, nominally to keep them from infecting others? How does throwing them all in together help each sufferer individually get well? Can you get well in a room full of other victims of an epidemic, coughing and transmitting? That may be the basis of the resistance to going to them - that the people aren't convinced they're going to get any sort of cure, and penned up with other sufferers, they might actually get sicker.

Update: Like this:

Here's a look into one of #Wuhan's "hospitals" created to treat patients with #CoronaVirus.



If you didn't have it before coming to the hospital, you definitely have it after entering.



The #CCP is turning hospitals into morgues.#WuhanCoronavirus pic.twitter.com/xaf6tXizhA — Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) February 8, 2020

Maybe they are reading this forced encampment as the state letting them all die together for the sake of the collective. After all, if anyone gets sick or dies in one of those places due to bad care, how can the state be held accountable? In a communist system 'we never make mistakes.'

It's pretty chilling. Totalitarian states have little mercy for the sick and dying.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot