“…what would be wrong with ALL measures of containment being enacted, even the ones that in hindsight would turn out to be fruitless, until we could have gotten a handle on this?”
What would be wrong with implementing “containment measures” that don’t work, “just in case”? A LOT. The more we subject American health care workers returning from Africa to unnecessarily stringent procedures, the more we discourage those workers from returning to Africa and others from going there in the first place to treat Ebola. Not to mention that the cost/benefit ratio has to make sense. The advantage of a “kitchen-sink” approach over a measured and methodical approach is infinitesimally small, especially compared with the collateral damage of such an approach– which, in addition to majorly inconveniencing doctors and nurses and their families, and depriving Africans of much-needed care, would also incite a blind national panic. It just doesn’t add up.
Incidentally, in the Dallas hospital, experts have noted that Ebola may have infected the nurses due in part to the nurses going above and beyond the recommended protective measures, e.g. wearing three pairs of gloves instead of two. You might think that more is always better, but it’s not true.