Democratic countries are ready to compromise individual rights to arrest the outbreak, sometimes in heavy-handed ways.

THINK OF SOMETHING MUCH CLOSER TO THE RESPONSE TO 9/11. — MEGAN MCARDLE

Talking to the BBC, Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, explained why he considers it extremely unlikely that the United States will follow Italy’s lead and quarantine a large part of its population, in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus: “It’s just the antithesis of the freedoms that we theoretically have.” Although Redlener was insistent that government shutdowns of public spaces would be very difficult for Americans to manage, his choice to characterize the freedoms that would prevent such martial law as being “theoretical” was noteworthy.

And it took place in the context of authoritarian countries already showing plenty of disregard for both civil liberties and the truth. Authorities in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, for example, threatened the death penalty for citizens who deliberately violate quarantine, while people reporting on coronavirus in the country were arrested or disappeared.

The announcement by Iranian authorities that a 300,000- person task force would be showing up at “every single home” to combat the virus was more intimidating than comforting, given that it came from a regime that is notorious for its violent repression of those who dare criticize it. Nor did increasing in- person interactions among so many Iranians sound like a very sound public health plan for tackling an infectious disease.

And in Venezuela, the president threatened reporters who were conveying information about coronavirus, an illness he says was created by the Americans.

As we are seeing this week, democratic countries are also ready to compromise individual rights to arrest the coronavirus outbreak, sometimes in surprisingly heavy- handedly ways, with Italy banning mass gatherings and prohibiting people from leaving their home regions, not to mention putting the whole country under quarantine, and the United States abruptly limiting travel from much of Europe for 30 days ( and announcing the ban in a confusingly sweeping way).

People certainly understand that coronavirus is dangerous, especially because it has not been handled well so far by so many countries ( including, sadly, the United States, which has managed to mess up the very basic matter of testing for the virus). We get it: serious measures are needed to get coronavirus under control, and some sacrifices will have to be made.

People are right to be concerned, however, that some of these liberty- curbing measures don’t appear to be based on sound science — and no one should be willing to give up their civil liberties for schemes that are unlikely to help.

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement about coronavirus, in which it promised make sure the U. S. government’s response is proportional and fair. “Even if a quarantine is imposed, people do not lose their due process rights, which at a minimum require that they be able to challenge their quarantine,” read a statement released by the organization.

Public health officials know better than most that a forcible lockdown like China’s is not the best way to contain an infectious disease. Voluntary self- quarantine is usually a more effective way of stopping the spread of illness than coercive isolation. It leads to more co- operation and minimizes the distrust of, and violence against, public health workers, which has proved to be a barrier in fighting outbreaks of Ebola.

In a study published last month, The Economist showed that democracies “are better than other forms of government at containing and treating outbreaks,” and that they have had lower mortality rates in epidemics such as Zika and smallpox.

But once China stopped stubbornly pretending coronavirus wasn’t happening, the country’s ironfisted approach worked, we’re told. Sure, if we assume the numbers currently coming out of China are accurate, it worked. It’s just that that’s an unwise assumption to make.

In an excellent opinion piece in Wired earlier this month, headlined, Dictatorships Are Making the Coronavirus Worse, Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation, warned that “in a reality where entire families are dying and where prisons are now reporting outbreaks, ( the Chinese government’s coronavirus death- toll) number seems like a certain underestimation and the product of a paranoid regime.”

God only knows, as Gladstein suggests, what’s happening in North Korea, where hundreds of thousands of people are crowded together in gulags and reliable information is even harder to come by than in China.

For voluntary, rights-preserving measures to work in containing coronavirus, though, the government must come through with certain responsibilities that individuals can’t take care of on their own, including timely, accessible testing for the disease and timely and accessible advice for people who may be infected. Until officialdom gets that part of the plan down, travel bans and mandatory quarantines shouldn’t even be under consideration.

PLENTY OF DISREGARD FOR BOTH CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE TRUTH.