If they can quarantine a visibly healthy nurse with no sign or

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. That's what "quarantine" is.

Quarantines have been used in public health since since at least 1377, when the Mediterranean city of Dubrovnik (then known as Ragusa) isolated ships suspected of carrying the Black Plague for a 40-day period before letting them enter their ports. But they aren't widely enacted anymore because they often group whole categories of people together, without any consideration of individual risk, impeding civil liberties.

It's important to distinguish between quarantine, and isolation for infection control purposes. They mean different things, but have been used interchangeably in the news lately.

Isolation separates sick people who are contagious from healthy people, to stop them from spreading their disease.

Quarantine is a preventive measure: it separates healthy people who are at risk of developing an infectious disease from others, to wait and see if they become sick — in the hopes of stopping further disease spread.

In the context of Ebola, a quarantine would involve separating a healthy person who had contact with Ebola patients (e.g. health-care workers returning to the US from West Africa) from others for 21 days. Again, this is different from isolating people who have tested positive for Ebola in, say, a special unit at a hospital.

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/28/7079655/quarantine-explainer