>A strict quarantine is (by the odds) probably not necessary.
>
>What is the cost of a strict quarantine?
>It would temporarily inconvenience a very small population for a few weeks.
>
>A strict quarantine is 100% effective.
>And it would inconvenience far less people in a year than we inconvenience every day for jury duty, traffic school, and TSA inspections.

A strict quarantine is comparatively expensive since people need to be available to provide services to those quarantined. It also has the side effect of discouraging people from going to Africa to fight the disease, knowing that however long they spend there, they'll have another 21 days before they can return to their families and homes. Fewer folks going to fight the disease in Africa means more disease there, longer to tamp it down, and thus more opportunity for it to spread. Quarantining these people rather than using our good public health structure to monitor them is a dangerous waste of resources.

This whole thing to me is another example of how science has been denigrated in this country. We're making what should be scientific decisions based on politics, not science.

Tamar