A Kentucky couple has been placed under house arrest for refusing to sign a document saying they would self-quarantine after one of them tested positive for COVID-19, reports Louisville’s WAVE-TV.
Elizabeth Linscott, of Hardin County, Kentucky, was planning to visit her parents in Michigan. Her grandparents also wanted to see her, so she decided to get tested for the virus before making the trip. Her test came back positive.
While that may or may not indicate that Linscott actually has the virus — thus far she has shown no symptoms of it — as far as she and local authorities were concerned, she was infected. They even agreed that she should stay home to avoid transmitting the disease to anyone else. But they disagreed on whether she should have to sign a document stating that she would do so.
Soon after Linscott’s positive test result came back, the local health department “contacted her and requested she sign documents that will limit her traveling anywhere unless she calls the health department first,” wrote WAVE. Among the clauses in the document: “I will not travel by any public, commercial, or healthcare conveyance such as ambulance, bus, taxi, airplane, train, or boat without the prior approval of the Department of Public Health.”
Linscott refused to sign — not because she was trying to make a political statement but because she disagreed with the wording of the document.
“My part was if I have to go to the ER, if I have to go to the hospital, I’m not going to wait to get the approval to go,” she said. She added that she would certainly take the necessary precautions if she had to go to the hospital, such as notifying staff of her positive COVID-19 test. She was not, however, going to wait around while bureaucrats mulled over whether or not she could seek emergency treatment.
Such independent thinking is, of course, anathema to government. Linscott said she received a text message from the health department telling her that since she had refused to sign the document, the matter would be escalated to law enforcement. A couple of days later, officials from the Hardin County Sheriff’s Department appeared at her home without warning. At the time, her husband, Isaiah, was there.
“I open up the door and there’s like eight different people, five different cars,” he said, “and I’m like what the heck’s going on? This guy’s in a suit with a mask, it’s the health department guy, and they have three papers for us — for me, her, and my daughter.”
Those papers informed them that they were under house arrest. The couple were forced to wear ankle monitors, which will notify law enforcement — and presumably trigger further penalties — if they venture more than 200 feet from their house.
“We didn’t rob a bank, we didn’t rob a store, we didn’t steal something, we didn’t hit and run, we didn’t do anything wrong,” Elizabeth Linscott said.
Instead, they have been placed under house arrest not for deliberately spreading a contagious disease — they “said they never denied self-quarantining,” noted WAVE — but for disagreeing with the health department about a document they were asked to sign.
“That’s exactly what the Director of the Public Health Department told the judge [that signed the arrest warrants], that I was refusing to self-quarantine because of this and that was not the case at all,” Linscott said. “I never said that.”
Thus, a situation that probably could have been resolved with dialogue and compromise was instead “resolved” by the use of brute force. But force is government’s sole means of obtaining compliance, and as the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Elizabeth told WAVE “that she’s okay with quarantining but should be able to make her own decisions if she needs to leave her home for an emergency.” Apparently such a retrograde, 2019 attitude cannot be tolerated in post-COVID America, where all common sense and constitutional rights must be subordinated to a totalitarian campaign to stamp out the coronavirus.
The Linscotts, at least, haven’t given up on the old America yet. They’re planning to hire an attorney to fight their house arrest.
Image: Enigmangel/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Michael Tennant is a freelance writer and regular contributor to The New American.
