Why Hickox should have obeyed

Some states across the country are imposing stringent and unnecessary quarantine requirements on healthcare workers exposed to Ebola patients. The emerging patchwork of state regulations sows confusion and further undermines the public's trust in science and medicine.

It also will make it more difficult to contain Ebola. By stigmatizing altruistic healthcare workers returning from West Africa and their counterparts who treated Ebola patients here, it will become more difficult to recruit volunteers to go to the epicenter of the outbreak, where it ultimately has to be contained.

Politicians in the midst of heated political campaigns propounded many of the quarantine regulations. With votes on the line, they no doubt were responding to public fears stoked by the 24/7 media coverage of nurse Kaci Hickox, who upon returning from Sierra Leone was briefly held in quarantine near Newark's University Hospital by order of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

When she returned to Maine, where Gov. Paul LePage is up for re-election, Hickox was ordered to stay at home for the full 21-day incubation period, even though she had no fever or other symptoms. Last Thursday, with the media in tow, Hickox went for a bike ride with her boyfriend.

“I'm not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it's not science-based,” she said.

That set the stage for another standoff. Hickox enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union and prominent constitutional lawyers while LePage sent his officials into court to enforce the order.

I have great respect for the bravery of Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders volunteer. But her actions upon returning home weren't helpful. This country has a grand tradition of civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. But protecting public health during disease outbreaks requires an educated and disciplined public responding quickly to official pronouncements, which are always subject to change in the midst of a public-health crisis, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's shifting guidelines on Ebola prove.

Even if the decision by Maine public-health authorities went beyond the available science, Hickox set a poor example by publicly flouting their order. At least they were erring on the side of greater public protection.

It's instructive that earlier this year, when the first patient with Middle East respiratory syndrome—an infectious disease with a 30% fatality rate, almost as high as Ebola—walked into Munster, Ind.'s Community Hospital, the hospital imposed a 14-day home isolation period on all staff who had come in contact with the patient during his stay No politics. No uproar. Simply erring, if it was an error, on the side of caution.

The military has imposed a similar demand on its personnel when they return from West Africa, where President Barack Obama has dispatched 3,000 troops to help quell the outbreak. Unnecessary? Perhaps. But one thing the military understands is the need for discipline in the face of an enemy. In this case, the enemy is Ebola.

Hickox had the perfect platform from within her home to help educate the public about why Ebola patients aren't contagious until they exhibit symptoms, and then only if others are exposed to their bodily fluids. Some of the world's greatest moral leaders have educated the public from within the four walls of their jail cells.

Instead, she came off as selfish and political. More significantly, she sent the harmful message that official public-health pronouncements, even when they are wrong, can be ignored.