Another round of radio interviews today, and in every instance people wanted to talk about quarantine—how it destroyed lives 140 years ago in the colony, and whether it might happen again today, with Avian Flu. You’d like to think that governments learn from past errors, though that’s often not the case. One sad example: during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, politicians proposed making Kalaupapa an AIDS colony.

Last November, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the national Pandemic Influenza Plan. The document says that a variety of disease-containment strategies on a state and local level may be used in case of a pandemic. Measures range from community-wide, enforced quarantine to less restrictive actions, including asking people to stay home from work or school to help slow disease spread, restrictions on gatherings, and cancellation of public events.

Since influenza is on the list of federally quarantinable diseases–a list that used to include leprosy–the HHS secretary can make and enforce regulations to prevent the spread of flu from foreign countries into the United States or between states. HHS can also aid local jurisdictions in enforcing their quarantines. Here’s a snippet from the HHS’s “Key Pandemic Response Components and Legal Authorities”:

Individuals may be denied admission to the U.S. if thought to have a communicable disease of public health significance, as defined in CDC regulations. Individuals also may be isolated or quarantined by the Federal Government, or restricted from moving within or between states, if thought to have been exposed to or to be a source of infections to others of a communicable disease listed in an executive order signed by the President.

The specific details of what kind of quarantine would be implemented—if any—and how it would be enforced during flu pandemic have not been announced. Last fall, however, President Bush suggested using the military to control people’s movements during an avian flu outbreak.