Living in Quarantine

"Life in Quarantine for Ebola Exposure: 21 Days of Fear and Loathing"
By:  Kevin Sack, Jack Healy and Frances Robles
Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/us/life-in-quarantine-for-ebola-exposure-21-days-of-fear-and-loathing.html?ref=health&_r=0

As the Ebola scare spreads from Texas to Ohio and beyond, the number of people who have locked themselves away, some under government orders and some voluntarily, has grown beyond those who lived with and cared for Mr. Duncan before his death on Oct. 8. Ms. Jallah, her partner and her four children have quarantined themselves since the day her mother’s boyfriend, Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person who brought in Ebola to America, was hospitalized with the disease. Because her mother was at work, it was Ms. Jallah's responsibility to take care of Mr. Duncan, making him tea and handing him a thermometer. But, she says she never touched him. Mr. Duncan's girlfriend, Ms. Jallah's mother, says, “If I even go to the store and I see a fellow Liberian, they run away. They don’t understand. They think we have the Ebola, that’s what they think — that even by speaking to them, saying hi to them, that they’re going to get it. No one wants to die.” She has been cleared from the disease but she never goes out and is not allowed to use public transportation.

Ms. Jallah has also had to care for her children, ages 2 to 11, who have been kept out of school, and she and Mr. Yah are still unwelcome at their jobs as nursing assistants.
Then came the discovery that the two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who were treating Mr. Duncan have caught this disease bringing fears to hospital workers and other contacts.
Officials in Texas have said on Thursday that about 100 health care workers are going to be asked to sign pledges not to use public transportation, go to public places like shops and restaurants for 21 days. 21 days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola. This pledge is not a mandate, but the notice warns that violators “may be subject” to a state-ordered quarantine.