>>>A strict quarantine is 100% effective.
>>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.
>
>Comparatively expensive for a tiny population = cheap over the entire population.
>
>If we are suddenly concerned about wasting resources chasing incredibly tiny risks, then we should disband the TSA.
>The two situations are quite comparable - spending public monies fighting horrible but extremely unlikely risks.

I generally refer to what the TSA does as "security theater," so while I don't think we should eliminate airport checks, I think the way we do it now is absurd. But that's a conversation for another day.

The point here is that we can keep the public safe much less expensively and in a way that doesn't make it harder to fight the epidemic where it's occurring.

>
>>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.
>
>Agreed about politics being held above public safety.
>
>It is disgusting to risk exposing the US population to score political points about faith in the infallibility of scientific knowledge.
>
>Faith and infallibility belong in religion, not science.

This isn't about "faith in the infallibility" of science. It's about decades of accumulated knowledge.

Tamar