Are Mandatory Ebola Quarentines 'Unscientific?"

In the early 90's, scientists were just getting a good understanding of HIV. The disease had been around for a long time, but it wasn't understood exactly what it was until the early 80's. In the 90's, scientists told everyone that you could not get HIV as long as you wore a condom. Some people scoffed at this. They refused to believe that a condom could protect them from HIV.

Years later, it turns out the scoffers were correct. In fact, some people have gotten HIV from others while using a condom - correctly. Here's where it gets tricky - people who have HIV have to be constantly monitored (about once every six months or so) for their viral load. The goal is to keep viral loads low. When viral loads are low, it is relatively difficult to get HIV from an infected person. Could it happen? Possibly - we can just take a group of people with HIV, lock them in a cage, monitor them for viral loads daily and then expose them to non-infect people through sexual contact and needle sharing. This would be the only true scientific way to determine whether or not they are contagious to other people during this time.

Fast forward to Ebola. Can a person who is showing no symptoms give it to anyone else? It is assumed - and I mean ASSUMED because there is NO SCIENTIFICALLY COLLECTED EVIDENCE for EBOLA on this topic at the time of this post - that a person who is not showing symptoms has a low viral load - so low it will not cause someone else to get it. At this point, people who are NOT showing symptoms also WILL NOT show positive on an Ebola test whether or not they have the disease. This is simply because our equipment is not sensitive enough to detect low levels of virus.

Based on research on other viruses, such as HIV, if a person does have a low viral load, you cannot catch the virus from them through everyday contact - holding hands, hugging, working next to them, etc. Research we DO HAVE supports this - the only documented cases we have show Ebola spreads in situations where one individual is caring for or living with an Ebola patient or where one person has contacted the dead body of an Ebola patient. The more murky method of how Ebola spreads involves contact with articles of clothing/ bedding/ and other things the patient has come in contact with. In all the documented situations, the patient must be running at least a low-grade fever to spread the disease to someone else. However, this is the most we KNOW about Ebola.

Here is the trouble with Ebola - an exposed person can have a fever of 99.6 and either be normal or or be coming down with the disease. Officially, your fever has to be over 101 to be diagnosed with it. People who are being monitored have their temperature taken twice a day. People who are "self-monitoring" are SUPPOSED to take there temperature twice a day. However, when a person does develop a symptom, such as a spike in their temperature or diarrhea, they become contagious. Ebola has a 50% case-fatality rate.

There is absolutely no way to predict when or if someone who has been exposed to Ebola will develop these symptoms. When a person develops these symptoms in public - as our last two cases of Ebola in the United States did - it becomes a logistical nightmare to track all the people they came in contact with and then monitor them. All it takes is one non-quarantined person to develop Ebola, and then our government has to put numerous man hours into tracking people. This is a fact that neither the CDC or WHO debate. If you don't want to be in quarantine, would you be willing to pay a fine covering the costs of tracking your contacts? Would you also be willing to pay for the hospitalization of others you might have exposed?

In addition, I have to question why these people would not want to voluntarily quarantine themselves? If it is not your "intent" to harm others or put them at risk, then you do EVERYTHING you possibly can to keep them from harm, not matter what the cost to yourself. If a quarantine makes the people of your community feel safer, any attempt to avoid it IS doing them harm - psychologically.

If we aren't going to rely on the old adage "it's better to be safe than sorry," I think the best case to refer people to is that of Typhoid Mary - Mary Mallon said she wasn't contagious and refused to stop taking cooking jobs. However, she was a carrier for typhoid fever - the first known person to carry the disease without having symptoms of it. We have no clue if Ebola has asymptomatic carriers. We know people can be infected with it and not show symptoms, but we do not know if they are ever contagious. Why take the chance?