Have you ever been detained by a civilly-imposed quarantine, for a disease you did not have? How did, or would you have reacted?
When I arrived in Mopti, Mali, a cholera quarantine was imposed that night. For three days, nobody was allowed to leave the city, but freedom of movement within. I had a vax certificate, so a few of us were then alllowed past the checkpoint, and I heard later that the medical officer was relieved of his post, for letting us go. I didn’t see any signs of hoarding or disorder or panic. I had to change travel plans, but stilll made my flight out of Dakar.
Of course, as a child, I was quarantined at home when I had measles and chicken pox and whooping cough.
Yes. I had a positive TB test and was quarantined except for visits to the public health office. Once I had a week of treatment in me, I was allowed to return to work. It was a headache, mostly because I had no health insurance and a new part-time job that didn’t have paid sick days. I observed the quarantine. (After half a year of treatment, it was decided on the basis of x-rays that I didn’t have active disease, just exposure, and treatment was discontinued.)
Not for a disease I did not have but in college, I woke up to what appeared to be acne all over, so I went to the infirmary. The nurse took one look at me, said I had chicken pox and that I was not leaving. I was quarantined with another guy who also had chicken pox for a week or so. I called my friends, threw my dorm keys out the window to them and had them go to my room for some pajamas and other stuff.
We were supposed to have our temperature taken periodically, but rather than enter the room, the nurses stood at the door and told us to take our own temperatures. On the bright side, this is when I first started to watch Magnum, PI, because reruns were on in the afternoons.
Not this past Christmas, but the one previous I spent a week in hospital with extreme life threatening dehydration and diarrhea - they kept me in my own litle room and restricted visitors and the staff tended me in masks, gloves, booties and an overcoaty-sort of garment over their scrubs. For three days, while they were testing me for c-diff and whichever of the hepatitis.
mrAru and I wouldn’t have minded being on the cruise ship in quarentine, we always get handicap balcony staterooms, so we would have been fairly comfortable [except we have put crowded vacations on hiatus til my immune system finishes rebooting.]
I returned to Toronto from Singapore at the height of SARS.
At the time, my bedridden MIL lived with us, and was scheduled to go into 14days respite care in a long term care facility, upon my return. Hubs was notified she would not be admitted if I returned directly to our home!
I went straight to a hotel, while he handled her admission, an enormous task to undertake alone, but I was helpless.
After which I got to go to my home, but I didn’t see friends or neighbours or family, or go out anywhere, for two weeks.
I’ve never been officially quarantined, but I was made to leave the college dorms for a day or two because there was a rash on my thumb. While not initially knowing what it was (it starts as two black circles that turned red and eventually grew to cover the face of my right thumb. And it was incredibly painful), I found out before the school kicked me out that they were two cold sores, something that’s rather rare these days (though hardly surprising for me - I am extremely vulnerable to cold sores and always have been). I told that to the RA, and she apologized saying she believed me, but they needed to hear it from my doctor. Luckily my parents lived right in town, so I stayed the night and my doctor called them the next day. The whole thing was really stupid, and the school did apologize to me afterward because I found it all incredibly embarrassing.
sort of related but my family had to leave our house due to a chemical fire. We spent 2 nights in a hotel before we were allowed to go home. We got $1000 due to a class action lawsuit. What was really bad was some people did not know about the fire and went to work and then were not allowed to go home. Fire was Thurs. night and we could not return home until Sat. morning.
Out of curiosity, how did they even find out? I was a RA at my school, and residents’ medical issues were so totally out of the scope of what was typically on my radar that I wouldn’t have known about them, unless a resident came to me with something like “My roommate Jim has gangrene!” or “Bob across the hall is wheezing and gasping for breath”, or in a very few cases, some residents had existing health challenges that we were made aware of for their own safety- it’s good to know someone is epileptic so you can get the right training in case they have a seizure, for example.
My room mates. I had been living with three other women, all of whom were pre-med, and two of which freaked out about my bandaged thumb and me not knowing what the issue was, and told the administration. I didn’t find out that it was them until after I came back, after I had ranted to them while sobbing because I was so humiliated over the whole thing.
I didn’t stay in that dorm much longer. I got an offer to trade to a dorm where I’d be able to live alone, and I jumped at the chance.
I’ve been quarantined twice; once a few months ago, and once right now. The first time, I was transferred from a hospital to a local nursing home for follow-up physical therapy and daily IV antibiotics for a staph infection. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nursing home was quarantining all new patients. I was tested and released into the rest of the nursing home after 3 days.
The second time is prep for minor surgery I’m having tomorrow. They had me get tested for COVID-19 last week and self-quarantine for a week before the surgery. In all, I’ve been tested 4 times, all of them negative.
The closest I ever came was not being allowed to go back to school without a certificate from the Board of Health after I had the measles. This was in the late 50s. Luckily, the only side effect I had was something to do with my hearing/ears that I had surgery for a year or two later when I had my tonsils removed.
In the 40s, whenever any member of the household had a communicable disease (mumps, measles, chicken pox, and everyone got them all), the police nailed a quarantine sign up on the door, which was mainly just advisory.
In Mopti. Mali, the whole city was quarantined for cholera outbreak. I was allowed to leave after a few days becausse I had a vaccination certificate.
Quarantine, by definition, results in confinement of many folks who do NOT have the condition.
“Quarantine: A state, period, or place of segregation in which people or animals that have arrived from elsewhere or been exposed to infectious or contagious disease are placed.”
One stays in quarantine long enough to demonstrate one does NOT have the contagious disease. If one does turn out to have the disease, then one is placed in isolation until they’re no longer contagious.
It’s been a challenge to get even medical professionals to use these terms correctly.