I don’t think it’s to make the disease spread - it’s because we are a free society with a civil rights lawyer behind every tree. So unless people violate self-quarantine, there’s no reason to put a cruiser against their front door.
The evacuees were a different story - 14 days ago, they were our first chance to actually look at the disease/ And, since we didn’t know, at the first flight, what we were dealing with, and neither did the rescued (a majority of whom were govt employees), it was prudent to quarantine them within minutes’ travel of critical care facilities.
As 14 days ticked off, and the March and initial Travis folks remained disease-free (also the Brits - might have been released today?) there was some confidence that self-quarantine was the right approach. Crap data from China was useless and spotty. But in the past 5 days, there’s evidence of the last two rescue flights having asymptomatic turning symptomatic.
So now it’s back to the drawing board, which may (should?) change how we quarantine incoming civilians and/or deal with the me-me-me’s refusing. (we had one of those at March, prompting that state health dept detainment order).
As it stands, any citizen returning from China is supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days and call ahead to a hospital, etc., and not just show up. I guess we rely too much on people possessing good ethics that self-motivate people to care about one’s countrymen and to not want to make others sick from our own actions.
But forced quarantine or quarantine of an entire household of civilians is going to be a whole lot more complicated legally speaking. And who pays? It will likely be the nurses unions who tip the scales to public acceptance of tighter controls. Life versus liberty.
It’s not like we haven’t quarantined before.
We did it plenty in the 1800’s and early 1900’s.