The testimony continues, with Maddox asking the questions:
Q: So what can we do – test everyone and quarantine those with HIV to a desert island?
A: Back in the nineties, the New York City Health Department established detention centers for people with TB who refused to take their medicine.
Q: Sounds like a good way to protect the public, why haven’t you tried that?
A: The law doesn’t allow us to quarantine people with HIV.
Q: So those infected with this new strain can keep on having unprotected sex and spreading this virus?
A: Yes, we have no way to stop them.
In other words, quarantine is made to seem as a quite reasonable response, one which the State is unfortunately unable to put into place because "the law doesn’t allow us to."
Now do I think the State is writing our television shows? No, I doubt it. Rather, ideas are developed collectively within classes. Repressive epidemiology (i.e. quarantines, criminalization, or in this case murder) is a set of ideas currently being mulled over by the "well informed" (i.e. the establishment). Tensions around the "coming any day soon" bird flu pandemic, the continuing HIV pandemic, the spread of crystal meth, and myriad other health problems are just so much grist for the mill of "sentimentalist" television.
Silly to spend so much time dissecting a television show? Perhaps. But you know, it is one of my favorite shows, and i am not kidding when i say that this is a frequent formula. It’s worth watching if you have nothing better to do, but it’s also worth analyzing.
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