Quarantine

As you may or may not know, we went to Florida a little while ago, to visit my in-laws, and so we are in our "voluntary quarantine" phase. So naturally I've been thinking about New Jersey's quarantine rules.

I understand the desire to quarantine people who have traveled in order to slow the spread of the virus. That's sound science. But NJ doesn't quarantine all travelers, only ones coming from certain states. And that I find puzzling.

If you quarantine people based on the distance they travel, that makes sense. By trying to localize contact points to spread the virus, you would keep outbreaks, if any occur, local.

If you quarantine people based on how they travel, that also makes sense. For instance, we traveled by air, and were exposed to TSA workers, people in the airport, the other people on the plane, the previous occupants of the plane, etc. - literally hundreds of contacts. If we had traveled by RV, we might only have been exposed when buying food and gas.

But New Jersey does neither of these, but quarantines based on state. Now at the time we were in Florida, the case rate and death rate for people in Florida was half of what it was in New Jersey during the same period. So we are less likely to have been bringing the virus from Florida than if we had visited Freehold. Where is the "science" behind that?

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