I do not understand what a 3 day quarantine would accomplish when the disease can take three weeks to become symptomatic.
By itself, probably not much. But with the door-to-door visits they were able to take 130 patients and 100 dead bodies out of the mix, each of which could have spread Ebola to a bunch of people. It may be enough to help them get it under control. Time will tell.
First, don’t try to fake people out about what the goal was, the goal was to establish contact with the population, educate, and evaluate, during a 3 day lockdown.
Notice the title of the article they call it a “lockdown”.
“”Ebola outbreak: Sierra Leone lockdown declared ‘success’””
“A three-day curfew aimed at containing the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has been declared a success by authorities.
They say more than a million households were surveyed and 130 new cases discovered.”
The virus takes 3 to 21 days to produce symptoms, but my impression is that the bulk of people show symptoms sooner than later. Not sure, but I thought most people produced symptoms within 3 to 5 days.
Thus for 3 days you're not spreading it except within households. That gives you time for people to start showing symptoms and to identify them, before spreading it to a larger population.
If all people showed symptoms within 3 days (We know that's not true), a three day shut-in, would stop the spread and identify all carriers, while minimizing the additional people exposed.
If all people showed symptoms within 5 days, (Not true either), a three day shut-in, would temporarily stop the spread and would identify 60% of the carriers, while minimizing the additional people exposed.
So just a 3 day shut-in could really have a big impact. But they might have to have more shut ins and for longer periods of time to really bring it to an end.