The man who compared COVID lockdowns to Nazi Germany now has an American citizen locked in a room with armed guards.

"This is the final proof that there is no check and balance on a basically indefinite detention under the public health law."

Angela Perryman, 47, from her quarantine cell in Omaha, Nebraska

Angela Perryman has been held in the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha for more than a month. She tested negative for hantavirus. She has shown zero symptoms. A federal medical reviewer recommended she be released to home quarantine with daily telehealth monitoring.

On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overruled the recommendation and ordered her to stay locked up until June 21. The order was slipped under the door of her room like a notice from the warden.

Perryman is one of 18 American passengers evacuated from the M/V Hondius cruise ship in early May after an outbreak of Andes virus, the only strain of hantavirus known to spread between people. Of the nearly 150 passengers and crew aboard, 13 contracted the virus and three died. The rest were quarantined.

Translation: the health secretary who once called pandemic restrictions worse than Hitler's Germany now thinks indefinite solitary confinement is an appropriate public health tool.

The conditions of Perryman's detention are stark. She spends 23 hours a day alone in her room at the federal facility. Once a day, she gets one hour on the building's rooftop, watched by armed guards. Her temperature is taken twice daily. Food is provided on request.

"They're polite and they're not using physical violence against me, but otherwise it's a prison," Perryman told the New York Times.

The CDC's own quarantine medical reviewer, Dr. Michael Bell, examined her case and concluded that less restrictive alternatives would adequately protect public health. Bell, who was not previously involved in the case, recommended daily telehealth monitoring with remote temperature checks and symptom assessments, along with a pre-arranged hospital plan in case she developed symptoms.

"This is a reasonable and efficient approach that is consistent with the level of transmission risk associated with Andes virus infection," Bell wrote in his review.

Kennedy's order rejecting the recommendation was brief and offered no medical justification. It simply stated that the requirements for federal quarantine continued to be met.

The irony of Kennedy's position is not lost on public health experts or legal scholars. Lawrence Gostin, the founding O'Neill Chair in Global Health Law at Georgetown University, called the order "a shocking disregard for both science and personal freedom" and said it should be immediately challenged in court.

But the deeper story is the reversal. During the COVID pandemic, Kennedy was among the most vocal critics of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. In January 2022, at a Washington rally against vaccine requirements, he compared U.S. restrictions to Nazi Germany, and somehow argued they were worse.

"Even in Hitler Germany," Kennedy said, "you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did."

After Trump tapped him for health secretary, Kennedy justified mass firings at the CDC by saying the agency responded "miserably during COVID when its disastrous, nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools, caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science, and heightened economic inequality."

The man who once called pandemic restrictions a violation of civil liberties now believes an asymptomatic woman should be held in solitary confinement because her home state will not agree to 24/7 surveillance.

Perryman's situation is complicated by a dispute between the CDC and Florida, where she lives part-time. The CDC demanded that anyone released from federal quarantine receive continuous monitoring, initially proposing law enforcement officers stationed outside their homes. Health officials later softened this to require a healthcare worker on site around the clock.

Florida's Surgeon General, Joseph Ladopo, pushed back. In a May 28 letter to the CDC, he wrote that the state "is not necessary to implement the federal conditions of 24/7 continuous surveillance and twice daily in-person monitoring."

Perryman says she believes she is being retaliated against for publicly criticizing how HHS handled the quarantines. "A non-physician just overrode the physician medical reviewer," she said, emphasizing that Kennedy is not a doctor.

Her lawyer, Steven Hyman, said the order "flies in the face of the findings of the medical reviewer."

Perryman is not the only person affected by what legal experts are calling an expansion of federal quarantine powers beyond their legal foundation. Hantavirus is not on the CDC's official list of quarantinable diseases, which requires presidential executive order to add conditions. Healthbeat reported that the CDC's novel approach, arguing hantavirus qualifies as a type of severe acute respiratory syndrome, risks a legal challenge.

"The disagreement between CDC and Florida over the appropriate monitoring conditions forms a central dispute in this medical review," Bell wrote. His resolution: let the woman go home with daily telehealth check-ins. Kennedy's resolution: keep her locked up.

What makes this story particularly revealing is not just the hypocrisy, but the mechanics of how it happened. Perryman described an administrative appeals process filled with bureaucratic hurdles, where she and her attorneys had to clear numerous procedural obstacles before they could even seek judicial review.

"They've managed to run the clock down and deny me my Fifth Amendment rights," she said. "We followed the procedure set forth in the regulation, we complied with the law, and they did not."

The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on why Kennedy overruled his own agency's medical expert.

Some passengers from the cruise ship have been allowed home quarantine since May 31, provided their states agreed to monitoring requirements. Perryman says she is one of 10 still in Omaha, but the only one being held against her will.

The question is not whether Andes virus is dangerous. It killed three people on that ship, and person-to-person transmission, while relatively rare, is real. The question is whether the government's response to a potential threat should include detaining asymptomatic Americans in solitary confinement after its own medical experts say it is unnecessary.

Kennedy once argued that pandemic restrictions violated civil liberties and destroyed small businesses. Now he has signed an order keeping a healthy woman locked in a room with armed guards for weeks she does not need to serve.

The man who compared lockdowns to Nazi Germany did not abolish them. He just changed who they apply to.

rfk jr, hantavirus, civil liberties, quarantine