Ebola and the Fiction of Quarantine

Every couple years there is a disease that comes around that brings up the debate about the ethics of quarantine. a few years ago it was the H1N1 virus and now it is Ebola. In this essay that I read, Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley bring some interesting new arguments to the table regarding violation of rights regarding quarantine.

In the beginning of this essay when the authors were giving some background about containment systems, I was very curious about what they actually looked like. because of the article I understand all of the components of it but I wanted to have a picture to compare it to. I found this picture online of what a containment system would look like.




after seeing a picture I can understand the author's comparison of it to an "amateur greenhouse" or "a children's fort."

The article went on to go in depth on some examples and arguments of where attempted quarantines went wrong and how dangerous that can be.  it really made me think about my stand on the issue. I would have to agree with the authors on the account that not quarantining people can have monstrous effects on everybody not just the infected one. It's easy for people who are uninfected to agree with quarantining infected people for the greater good but its not easy to be quarantined when you are the sick one.

At the end of the day, I think forcing people to be quarantined is violating your rights and you can't do that. I think that there is many other ways that the CDC can try and control disease without forcing people to be quarantined such as making vaccinations more easily available or even mandatory or offering incentives for infected people to become voluntarily quarantined.