[joezydeco]

Seems incongruous to take your national heroes and make them sit in a hot trailer for a few days "for show" instead of whisking them home for their debrief and ticker-tape parades.

Unless it was not for the benefit of the astronauts, but the skeptical public back home? Hmm.

[tsimionescu]

A quarantine is never for the sake of those you quarantine, it's for the sake of the public, by definition.

[rogerrogerr]

Except after the 2019 strain of coronavirus was identified, then we turned it all upside down and said “stay home, stay safe” as loud as possible for two years straight.

[tsimionescu]

"Social distancing" was not quarantine. It was a recommendation to reduce the frequency of meeting with others, but it wasn't strictly enforced: you were allowed to go out and do things, but in limited capacity. And this was both for your own sake to some extent, and for the sake of everyone else to some extent - and it was explicitly presented as such, at least in more in-depth discussions. It wasn't just "stay home, stay safe", but "stay home, keep yourself safe, keep others safe". Especially since the main goal has always been to avoid overwhelming hospitals with serious cases, since the most disastrous death rated were seen in areas where this happened, at the start of the pandemic (in Wuhan, in the Milan/Bergamo area, in Iran).

You still had actual quarantines during the pandemic - anyone who had a positive test and anyone who had been in direct contact with them for the last X days, were often strictly forced to stay either at home or in isolated hospital rooms. This was quite explicitly not for their own sake, but to keep the public at large safe from them.

[jrockway]

I mean, if people had quarantined then we wouldn't have had a pandemic.

[scottyah]

I assume the "hot trailer" was better than the small capsule in space, which was also just "for show".