I remember seeing old movies where people were quarantined inside their homes because of chicken pox or measles. There were usually signs placed on the front door or property telling people why and since there were never any guards standing about, I guessed that it was pretty much voluntary.
These days, what with lawyers eager to encourage people to sue and people not only willing to do so, but wanting to claim rights violations, quarantining probably has been stopped.
I have always been astonished at the lack of social common sense by people, lawyers and the federal government when AIDS first struck the nation and no one had any real idea how it was spread. Not only were the first victims not quarantined in an effort to prevent the spread, but people got lawyers to sue public schools who did not want their AIDS infected kids mingling with the students.
Even later, it turned out that people with AIDS who were caught knowingly infecting others were never quarantined for the protection of the public, but barely punished because no one had set down any laws concerning such acts at that time. Quarantining was used to protect the public from disease, but violated civil rights when forced upon reluctant victims.
I guess lawyers managed to convince the law makers that infectious people have the right to freely infect unsuspecting members of the public, because it is against the civil rights of the sick to suffer enforced isolation of quarantine. No one has yet stood up to enforce the civil rights of the unsuspecting public to not be exposed to potentially deadly diseases by unknown carriers.
Because of the right to privacy, people infected with contagious, potentially lethal diseases may not be publicly listed to alert the general public to use care when dealing with them.
So, thanks to lawyers and their clients twisting and turning the laws, none of us can be really quarantined by force if we are ill, and those infected with lethal, contagious diseases are free to spread the misery. The only recourse so far is, if one catches such a disease from an infected person and can prove that said person was the infective agent, then said person can be sent to prison or sued by being charged with attempted murder. Because something like AIDS does not actually kill, but causes other diseases to do so, and because it can take years before the victim dies, the carrier cannot be charged with murder, even though that is the inevitable result.
I think it is really crappy that we allow rights of the few to override the overall good of the general public and violate their rights.