Steve Chapman: Ebola Quarantines Ignore Experience and Trample Freedom

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Christie
Gage Skidmore / Flickr

There is an assumption that health care workers returning from Ebola zones are too irresponsible to avoid infecting others. But groups that work in these areas know better than anyone how to avoid getting or giving the disease.

Ebola has been around since 1976, and Doctors Without Borders (which goes by the French acronym MSF) has a lot of experience on the front lines. Until this year's outbreak, the biggest ever, it had never had an international staff member infected. Only three have contracted the virus this time. None has spread it to other people.

Nor is any likely to, writes Steve Chapman.