RFK Jr Locked Healthy Americans in Rooms for 42 Days Against CDC Advice

What Actually Happened on That Cruise Ship

It started, as so many catastrophes do, on a cruise. The MV Hondius, a Dutch-flagged vessel sailing near the Canary Islands, became the site of a rare outbreak of the Andes strain of hantavirus in early May. According to the Guardian, three people died and 13 cases were identified on the ship. A Dutch couple is believed to have been the first infected, likely after visiting South America.

Eighteen Americans were evacuated to the national quarantine unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha beginning May 11. Another seven Americans who had already disembarked before the outbreak was formally documented were allowed to monitor for symptoms at home. That detail matters. We'll come back to it.

The Andes virus is the only strain of hantavirus known to pass between humans, and symptoms can take up to 42 days to appear. That's the science. That's the legitimate medical basis for the 42-day window. What happened next, though, had considerably less to do with science.

RFK Jr Overruled the CDC and Invented His Own Quarantine Policy

Here's where the story goes from 'scary outbreak' to 'federal government detaining innocent people against their will.' The CDC, the actual disease experts, recommended that those exposed should self-quarantine at home. Standard public health protocol. The kind of thing health officials do when they're trying to contain a disease without trampling on people's rights.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looked at that recommendation and decided, no. He overruled the CDC and ordered the enforced detention of the Americans in Omaha. The Guardian reports that health law experts called this decision not just wrong but dangerous, setting a precedent for the government to lock up healthy people on the flimsiest of justifications.

Angela Perryman, one of the eight passengers released Monday, wasn't subtle about how she felt. She told the Associated Press that Kennedy orchestrated "a political stunt." She said she was told on Sunday lunchtime that the quarantine had ended and she demanded a government-funded flight back to Florida that same night, which she got. "We were locked in our rooms until 1.55pm," she said. "And at two o'clock, 'OK, well, everybody walk out and go home.'" Six weeks of federal detention, ended with a shrug.

Legal Experts Are Using Words Like 'Unconstitutional'

This isn't just a story about bad vibes and government overreach. The legal case against what Kennedy did is, according to the experts the Guardian spoke to, pretty damning.

Lawrence Gostin, a health law professor at Georgetown University, called the detention of Perryman "arbitrary, capricious, and unjust." He said that "cavalierly detaining somebody for no good reason, no crime and no significant public risk" crossed a clear line. James Hodge, professor and director of the public health law and policy center at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, went further, saying health officials should never "use unconstitutional, ill-advised, unproven techniques to control infectious diseases."

Remember those seven Americans who got to stay home and monitor their own symptoms? They were exposed to the same outbreak. The government made a judgment call and let them go. Then, for the group unlucky enough to still be on the ship, Kennedy made a different call. Same virus. Same risk profile. Completely different treatment. Nobody has adequately explained why.

The Quarantine Facility Was Apparently Fine, Which Is Not the Point

To be fair, and we will be fair, the quarantine unit itself sounds like it was run by genuinely decent people doing their best in a weird situation. The Guardian reports that passengers stayed in hotel-like rooms with desks, televisions, internet access, and exercise equipment. Omaha restaurants and food trucks delivered meals almost daily. Nurses made runs to Starbucks. That's not a gulag.

Travel blogger Jake Rosmarin, who has 165,000 Instagram followers and was clearly not going to let this experience go to waste, posted a tearful farewell video thanking the quarantine staff for their "kindness, compassion, and humanity." He posted a second video Monday of himself leaving with two suitcases and a backpack, turning out the lights as he walked out. Then a video of the Omaha skyline from his plane window as he headed home to his fiance.

Good for Jake. Genuinely. But the quality of the hotel rooms is beside the point. The American government detained healthy citizens against their will, against the advice of its own disease experts, and against at least two prominent legal scholars' reading of the Constitution. The Starbucks runs don't fix that.

HHS Says It Was a Success. Sure.

The HHS, for its part, is calling this whole episode a win. HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told the Associated Press that the enforced quarantine "was necessary for the public good" and that HHS "helped protect the American people, contain potential risks, and bring this response effort to a successful conclusion."

None of the Americans taken to Nebraska were reported to have contracted hantavirus. Which is great. That is genuinely great. But it also means there's zero evidence the forced quarantine did anything the CDC's recommended home monitoring wouldn't have accomplished. The seven Americans who stayed home also didn't spread hantavirus across the country. So the natural question, the one HHS did not address in its triumphant press statement, is: what exactly did six weeks of mandatory detention accomplish that a strongly worded "please stay home" wouldn't have?