There’s plenty of information out there about the basic nature of a health quarantine and the legal principles under which quarantines can be imposed. I’m not really interested in that at the moment.
What I am interested in, however, is understanding practicalities. For example,
Do patients who are involuntarily quarantined have to pay for the quarantine? E.g. “Stop right there, you are being detained on suspicion of having <horrible disease du jour>. That’ll be $15,000 please for a two week stay.”
What rights do patients have with respect to how they are treated? E.g. do you have a right to make private phone calls? A right to receive mail? A right to be informed of the nature of any tests and observations that they are doing on you? A right to evaluate and select treatment options? A right to be transferred to another hospital or doctor who is willing to accept you as a patient? A right to wear your own clothes? A right to be free from physical restraints that are not medically necessary? Is it similar to the civil rights of people who have been involuntarily committed to mental institutions?
Strict legalities aside, how are quarantined patients generally treated in practice? E.g. do quarantined people generally get thrown into a padded cell with nothing but a hospital gown, or is it more like a low-budget hotel with crappy room service - not especially nice, but then not awful either?
Do not need answer fast. Any jurisdiction is applicable - I would actually be interested to know if it’s different in different countries, states, etc.
I was quarantined in Mali, during a cholera outbreak in Mopti. There were simply military checkpoints on all roads leading out, and people were sent back and told they could not leave. Arriving flights were canceled, and boats could discharge passengers, but could not take any on. In other words, go back and check back into your hotel, and wait.
After two days, people (like myself) who had proper vaccination certificates were allowed to leave by road, but I learned later that that had been unathorized, and officials who let vaccinated people leave were reprimanded.
I was individually quarantined with TB in the 1980’s. I was told to stay at home except to go to the doctor. I had a job with no sick leave pay, which added great distress beyond the distress of the diagnosis.
In the 1940s, when I got Measles and my sister got Mumps (not at the same time), the police came over on a motorcycle, and nailed up a quarantine sign on our front door. Household members who were not sick could go to work and to school, but nobody from outside the family was supposed to come in the house. The signs stayed up for two weeks. There was also the dreaded Polio sign, but relatively few kids got that, compared to Measles and Mumps. I think they might have quarantined Chicken Pox and Whooping cough, too, I’m not sure. There were no vaccinations then for any of those. My mother nearly died of Scarlet Fever.
It was an issue on a local college campus where some students came down with the flu and the college had to suddenly have a way to feed them and bring them their assignments from their classes. Plus find a place for their roommates to stay. Then finally to find them a separate bathroom to use.