Persuasive Redefinition: What Does "Quarantine" Mean in 2020?

Circa 2020, the world (with the notable exception of Sweden) is mostly under government-imposed prohibitions from most economic activity involving travel outside one's home, in response to a viral outbreak or global pandemic. Why? I suspect the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which touts one trillion dollars to dole out [*1], attaches strings of compliance with the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommendations to these loans. WHO recommends the aforementioned policy in response to the pandemic [*2]. Is every leader around the world imposing these policies solely out of benevolent concern for public health and safety as opposed to at least partly ensuring their oligarchs can access IMF cash?

By the way, what do we call these recommended measures: "lockdown," "shelter-at-home," "soft martial law," or "quarantine"? What is a quarantine? From the WHO: "The quarantine of persons is the restriction of activities of or the separation of persons who are not ill but who may have been exposed to an infectious agent or diseases, with the objective of monitoring their symptoms and ensuring the early detection of cases. Quarantine is different from isolation, which is the separation of ill or infected persons from others to prevent the spread of infection of contamination [*3]."



What does my Black's Law Dictionary, third pocket edition, from 2006 say? Quarantine: "The isolation of a person or animal afflicted with a communicable disease or the prevention of such a person or animal from coming into a particular area, the purpose being to prevent the spread of the disease."



What was your casual understanding of the word "quarantine" before reading these two mutually exclusive definitions? One is an inversion of the other. Which definition came first?

Epistemology, or inquiry into the nature of truth, was vigorously debated by the ancient Greeks, between logos and pathos, dialectic and sophistry. In dialectic and logos, discovery of truth is a process; conclusions are not predetermined, but only tentatively reached after vigorous questioning between participants with open minds. In sophistry and pathos, argument is a means to an end; conclusions are predetermined in the interest of the speaker, and language is used to manipulate an audience to accept the speaker's position.

Which type of argumentation is the World Health Organization engaging in when it changes commonly understood terms? What conclusion do they want you to bend your will toward?

[*1] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/imf-ready-mobilize-trillion-dollars-coronavirus-fears-loan-funds-emergency-2020-3-1028999665
[*2] https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1272428/retrieve
[*3] Id.

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