Well, that was fast. After I reported Wednesday night on PJ Media that Ventura County Health Director Robert Levin had announced a forcible COVID-19 quarantine plan and the news exploded into the public consciousness, he reversed course on Thursday.
That’s what naked outrage by citizens will do.
What a retreat it was.
Here’s what we reported on Wednesday and please note most of the following is Dr. Robert Levin’s own words:
On Wednesday, the soft voice of Ventura County Health Director Robert Levin confirmed that the forcible quarantines are underway. He announced a “pilot program that will grow into a larger program” and “we will find everyone with COVID-19 and we will isolate every one of them and we will make sure that they stay quarantined and we will check in with them every day. In other words, what this program means is we’re going to do a more complete job, we’re going to do a more meticulous job of making it less and less possible for others in the county to run into someone with COVID-19 infection.” [emphasis added]
I also wrote this, quoting him from the Wednesday news conference:
Levin said that we also realize that as we get more contacts, “some of the people are going to have trouble with being isolated, for instance, if they live in a home where there’s only one bathroom, and there are three or four other people living there and those people don’t have COVID infection we’re not going to be able to keep the person in that home. Every person whom we’re isolating, for instance, needs to have, uh, their own bathroom. And so we’ll be moving people like this into other kinds of housing that we have available. They’ll also have other needs perhaps – food, whatever it’s going to be – the county will be there to back them up and to support them.” [emphasis added]
Pretty clear, no?
Here is basically what he said Thursday as he walked it back.
Well, heh, heh, harrumph, hummana hummana hummana… of course I didn’t mean that! I was misinterpreted!
Okay, here’s what he really said Thursday, Fox News reported:
I either misspoke or it was misinterpreted – I’ll take the blame of having misspoke. Yesterday, at this conference, at the Board of Supervisors, I gave people the impression that if you were isolated, you would be taken out of your home and put into a hotel room or a motel room or sequestered in some other way.
If I did do that, I am very sorry. That is an option. That is possible. If you become infected, you don’t want to stay in your home, you’re afraid that you’ll expose other people, we’ll work with you to find a place to stay. And, it’s likely to be a hotel [or] a motel. We will desire for you to have your own room in your place of residence and a bathroom that can be dedicated to just you. Now, not everyone is fortunate enough to have more than one bathroom, so we’ll work with you.” [emphasis added]
Fox News reported that Levin said they’d been quarantining people already.
Levin added that out of the county’s some 600 confirmed coronavirus cases, “only in very, very unusual circumstances, we’ve had to put someone up in a hotel or motel and this was for reasons which have nothing to do with your choice of staying in your household.”
Now the left is coming after us here at PJ Media calling our first report inaccurate and worse.
It’s not, of course.
One can suppose that it’s a real bad look to have members of your team – the left – talking about forcibly “isolating” people. That’s like putting people in cages and family separations, isn’t it?
It’s easier to blame us for reporting it than it is to come to grips with the fact that this is exactly what was discussed and is currently underway.
I prefer this interpretation: We reported, you decided, and the government retreated.
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