This is 21 days of home confinement. Not a prison term. Against a disease we know little about, except that it kill 80% of the infected, that is still evolving (rapidly, like every other micro-organism), and developing new ways to kill people. While she has rights, the community around her also has the right to not be killed by her indifference to the possibility that she may be infectious. This isn't superstition or hysteria. The anti-quarantine people are engaging in obscurantism. The reality about Ebola is that we don't know what we don't know, which is how the doctors got infected in the first place. The bug is evolving.
We do know that it is not contagious unless a fever is present. There are many claims that the “bug is evolving”, but no evidence that this is any different than other strains of ebola that have broken out. We can not let irrational hysteria govern us.
Case in point: the nurses in Texas Presbyterian Hospital were probably contaminated when removing their personal protective equipment (PPE). It appears that, in an over abundance of caution, they wrapped the exposed skin of their neck with medical tape. They contaminated themselves attempting to unwrap this tape. If they had been wearing only the recommended PPE, they had a better chance of not being contaminated, as it is configured for easy, safe removal.
This is a dangerous, lethal disease, but there is still no evidence it can spread by anything other than contact with an infected patient’s bodily fluids. The problem is, patients who are seriously ill with ebola present with a greatdeal of bodily fluids being expelled, primarily feces (diarrhea) and emesis (vomit). The amounts were such that the PPE of those nurses was heavily contaminated and required careful, sequenced removal. With all that extra tape applied, they couldn’t remove the PPE as it was designed.