The CDC Made Plans to Put Americans in 'Quarantine' Camps During COVID Pandemic

The agency used our money to develop a blueprint for segregating Americans in camps during the pandemic indefinitely.

Remember during the COVID-19 pandemic when the conspiracy theorists among us said the United States government had plans to put people in quarantine camps? It turns out they were right.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) went beyond just advocating for masks, lockdowns, and mandatory COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. The agency quietly released a plan in July 2020 that sounds like it belongs in some sort of dystopian novel: a blueprint for segregating Americans in camps using taxpayer money.

The "shielding approach" targeted specific populations—especially the elderly and those with underlying health conditions—for relocation to designated “green zones” or camps, with no defined end date.

Titled Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings, this controversial proposal went far beyond a typical public health advisory. It outlined specific plans to physically segregate “high-risk” individuals from the general population—a move that’s hard to justify in any free society.

Segregation Camps and Green Zones

According to the document, high-risk individuals would be relocated and forcibly segregated from other Americans in “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector, or community level, depending on the context and setting. These individuals would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.

1. Household-Level Isolation: At the smallest scale, high-risk individuals would be isolated in a designated room within their own homes, and low-risk family members would be barred from entering unless absolutely necessary. Family interaction, once taken for granted, would be replaced by protocols, distance, and strict hygiene measures.

2. Neighborhood-Level Isolation: For groups of high-risk individuals from up to 10 households, the CDC recommended creating shared shelters within a neighborhood. This “neighborhood zone” would act as a bubble, limiting contact with the outside world.

3. Camp or Sector-Level Isolation: This was the most disturbing tier, suggesting entire camps or zones be set up in schools or other community facilities, where up to 50 high-risk individuals could be moved and isolated for months on end. Family visits? Restricted. Interaction with friends and loved ones? Only if they complied with strict guidelines.

Each zone would be a self-contained world where high-risk individuals were “safeguarded” by keeping them completely separate from the rest of the population. Once inside these zones, they would be effectively cut off from normal social interaction and freedom of movement, locked into a world dictated by government protocols.

But wait, it gets better. The CDC made suggestions for what each zone should contain. For example, the agency suggested that each green zone have a dedicated “latrine/bathing" facility for high-risk individuals.

No need to wonder where these federal employees got their inspiration for dedicated latrines and showers. Prisoners in German concentration camps during the Holocaust were also segregated and required to use certain latrines and showers in the name of preventing disease.

The CDC also said monitoring protocols would need to be developed and “dedicated staff” would need to monitor each green zone. This is no different than what you would see in a high-security prison.

“Monitoring includes both adherence to protocols and potential adverse effects due to isolation and stigma. It may be necessary to assign someone within the green zone, if feasible, to minimize movement in/out of green zones,” the document states.

Married? No worries. You would be isolated from each other in your own dedicated prison quarantine camp.

People with dementia were not worthy of human interaction at all. Under the CDC’s plan, these individuals and most older people would live out their days alone in isolation, with a sub-par caregiver on standby to help them use their dedicated latrine facility.

The surrounding camp sector would apparently have “markets,” but you would be required to “physically distance” from anyone you saw, even if you were considered to be lower-risk.

The plan requires “strict adherence.” An individual would not be allowed to come and go or decide when they want to leave. They would literally be confined to this camp with no individual liberties until a “safe and effective” vaccine is developed or the pandemic suddenly disappears. That’s assuming they cut corners and fast-track one in 10 months and not 10 years, everyone pretends it works, and it doesn’t harm you.

Of course, it goes without saying that anyone in the camp would be required to get vaccinated.

The CDC was well aware of the potentially devastating effects of such a plan. In the “mental health” section, the creator(s) of this authoritarian proposal explicitly acknowledge the plan may cause increased stress and anxiety—although they attribute it mostly to fear of infection.

Nonetheless, the author acknowledges the “shielding approach” may have an “important psychological impact” and may cause “significant emotional distress, exacerbate existing mental illness or contribute to anxiety, depression, helplessness, grief, substance abuse, or thoughts of suicide among those who are separated or have been left behind.”

The solution? A dedicated “caregiver” to make sure you don't kill yourself.

Who Was Behind the CDC’s Plan to Confine Americans?

The CDC’s document does not list a specific author. As a corporate author, it lists the Division of Viral Diseases (DVD) within the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) at the CDC, which was led in July 2020 by Dr. Nancy Messonnier.

Messonier is currently the Dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. UNC has been deeply involved in vaccine research and development, particularly concerning COVID-19. Researchers at UNC have collaborated with pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials and develop vaccine candidates.

How ironic.

Government actions, particularly those as intrusive as this, require transparency and accountability. Americans deserve to know who specifically crafted this policy and on what grounds it was deemed necessary. It is highly inappropriate that a leader of a division within the CDC allowed a proposal to be developed with our tax dollars that involved confining Americans like prisoners to the benefit of pharmaceutical companies, and then took a job that benefits vaccine makers.

The CDC might claim that the shielding approach was about protecting high-risk individuals, but the reality is far darker. Isolating people from their families, friends, and communities is not protection—it’s internment. Moreover, the CDC’s own document acknowledged that introducing the virus into these shielded zones could result in rapid transmission among the most vulnerable—a tragic irony for a proposal intended to protect them.

But the ethical concerns go even deeper. The shielding approach didn’t merely suggest isolation; it explicitly mentioned indefinite confinement. While the plan’s authors suggested that the green zones should “meet minimum humanitarian standards,” this language offers little comfort when individuals are essentially prisoners of their health status. This was not a short-term plan; the CDC acknowledged that it could last at least six months and possibly longer.

The proposal did acknowledge that community acceptance would be a hurdle. But let’s be honest: separating and labeling citizens based on their health is segregation.

Once isolated and stigmatized, these “shielded” individuals would face challenges reintegrating into society, if reintegration were even allowed. To “protect” society, the shielding approach risked creating a permanent underclass of people, cut off from the lives they once knew.

The CDC’s Plan Lacks Scientific Evidence

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the CDC’s proposal is its lack of scientific foundation. The document admitted that this strategy had never been tested in a large-scale setting, making the approach speculative at best.

How could the CDC propose such extreme measures without solid data? The answer remains unclear, but the implications are chilling. In its eagerness to contain COVID-19, the CDC was willing to roll out unproven measures that could radically alter lives and at a minimum, strip individuals of their freedom.

The CDC’s acknowledgement of a critical flaw in its own plan—that introducing COVID-19 into green zones would lead to rapid spread, endangering the very people it claimed to protect—highlights an alarming oversight and suggests that the approach was hastily conceived without considering the consequences. Or perhaps, they didn’t care.

The shielding approach strikes at the core of individual rights and liberties. The government cannot confine citizens based on health status. Yet, the CDC’s approach suggests it believed it could. By proposing indefinite isolation for high-risk individuals, the agency flirted with an authoritarian approach to public health, treating freedom as expendable in times of crisis.

Why This Matters in a Free Society

A free society is built on the trust that government will protect, not imprison, its citizens. The shielding approach is a stark reminder that this trust has been abused.

Governments, under the guise of protecting Americans, adopted and proposed heavy-handed policies while using a “health crisis” as a tool for control and an excuse to dismantle basic rights.

The CDC’s shielding approach was more than a flawed public health strategy; it was a blueprint for mass segregation that treated freedom as a dispensable luxury. Policies that so fundamentally threaten our way of life cannot be hidden away in archives.

Americans deserve to know who crafted the shielding approach and why it was even considered in the first place.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post stated that Dr. Lyn Finelli was the director of the NCIRD at the CDC in July 2020. Although Finelli did work at the CDC and went on to take a position with Merck, Dr. Messonier led the NCIRD at the time the proposal was published.