>>That cost/benefit analysis seems compelling to me.

If you're only talking about a few detainees, then the idea of thousands of death is FUD.

1) Nobody has ever contracted Ebola without coming into contact with body fluids of a symptomatic victim. Unless your neighbours are going to queue to sip the blood and sputum of a symptomatic sufferer, how will thousands be exposed, especially if the would-be sippers are denied access to quarantined symptomatic people?

IMHO it's worth watching the progress of the infected MD: a) to see how many he infected in his cross-town jaunt, if any, and b) whether he dies or even gets terribly sick.

Re a), consider that only 10 deaths happened outside the designated epicenter of this epidemic. This thing is difficult to catch, even in absolute poverty with already sick people and sparse medical care. And b): IMHO we're going to see a similar profile to the worse influenza strains: if you're not starving, immunocompromised, already sick or using black market blood products, it's not a death sentence. Some of the stuff going on in these places would never ever happen in the good old USA. E.g. if you get a moment, check out the black market blood product situation and the murder by stoning of care teams to avoid quarantine.

>>If he didn't quarantine and he should have, no apologies are possible

On this basis we could/should quarantine lots of people. E.g. it's irrefutable that some cancers are infections- again those visuses! Quarantine for newly diagnosed cancer sufferers, anybody?