re: #61 Hecuba’s daughter

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According to an NIH document, theoretically, the maximum period of quarantine is one incubation period from the last exposure. Wouldn’t this suggest that every time a new passenger on the ship is diagnosed with the disease, the clock restarts?

I’m not a physician or epidemiologist, but I believe that’s how it works.

If this was in the XX Century with smallpox, the solution would be quarantine an area with an outbreak and conduct ring vaccination of the people in the adjacent areas. That was how the disease was eradicated.

The 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak was the last major outbreak of smallpox in Europe. It was centered in Kosovo and Belgrade (both then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). A Muslim pilgrim had contracted the smallpox virus in the Middle East. Upon returning to his home in Kosovo, he started the epidemic in which 175 people were infected, killing 35. The epidemic was efficiently contained by enforced quarantine and mass vaccination. The 1982 film Variola Vera is based on the event.

en.wikipedia.org