How to handle quarantine rule breakers
Q: Someone you know isn’t following the 14-day, out-of-state-travel quarantine rule. How should you handle the situation?
A: If someone you know doesn’t comply with quarantine conditions, try couching a response this way: “This is reckless behavior because it’s a serious public safety issue” or “I take the right of freedom very seriously, but this is a potentially deadly disease.” Ask, “Would you want to be responsible for knowing you’re infected and then spreading it to someone else?”
There may not be legal consequences, but if people knowingly leave isolation when they’ve tested positive, then it becomes a moral issue. If you’re ordered to quarantine, it’s because you’ve been exposed and must isolate until you are no longer contagious or until you test negative. We cannot always count on other people to do what they’re supposed to; we can only count on our own behavior.
— Lisa Grotts, etiquette expert
A: The answer to this lies in a concept called social proof. Social proof is the idea that we look to other people to get a sense of what is normative behavior. So if a quarantine or mask law can get more people to abide by a 14-day quarantine or wear their masks, then other people will look at that and see their neighbors wearing masks or quarantining after traveling.
I think that is where social media could have a positive influence because you could post that you went somewhere and this is how you handled your quarantine when you came
back. Or you chose not to go somewhere because of quarantine.
Communication at DePaul University