California issues quarantine policy for Ebola exposure

[B2G]

By JOSEPH SERNA
OCTOBER 29, 2014 12:55 PM

Anyone arriving in California from an Ebola-affected area and who has had personal contact with a person infected with the deadly virus will be quarantined for 21 days, according to an order issued Wednesday by the state's public health director.

The order provides a more nuanced set of guidelines to assess the risk associated with people returning from regions afflicted by an Ebola outbreak -- currently Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- than the controversial blanket quarantines in New Jersey, New York and Maine.

In California, county health officials will have the ability to screen passengers arriving from Ebola-stricken regions in West Africa, or who have worked with infected patients, to determine if they’re at risk for the disease and if they should be quarantined for the virus' three-week incubation period.

Failure to comply with a quarantine order could result in misdemeanor criminal charges.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-orders-ebola-quarantine-protocols-20141029-story.html

[polichick]

1. Seems appropriate.

[B2G]

2. Agree

It's the same thing NY, IL & NJ have proposed, although I don't recall any of those states mentioning criminal charges for non-compliance.

[SheilaT]

3. It's stupid.

If you're not symptomatic, you can't spread the disease. Period. There is absolutely no point in quarantining non-symptomatic people. None.

What a shame more people don't actually understand this.

And don't come back to tell me this is an appropriate excess of caution, because it's not. How about we quarantine people as soon as they're exposed to the flu, because that disease spreads far more readily. So what if it doesn't kill quite as easily? It still has the potential to kill, and it's awfully easy to get it.

These quarantine rules show how little those who make them actually understand this disease, nor are they thinking about how much it's going to discourage health care workers anywhere from treating Ebola victims, either here or abroad. Simply being at risk because you've treated Ebola patients does not make you likely to infect anyone with it, at least not until you're vomiting and spewing bloody diarrhea. Up til then, not a problem.

Please notice that two and only two nurses who treated Eric Duncan got sick. Not a single person who was stuck in the apartment after he left got sick, nor did any of the many patients and health care workers in the ER the two times he was there, both times with symptoms. A supposedly precautionary quarantine is senseless.

[maced666]

4. Took a blue state to get it right.

Shocker.