You don't need science to grok this.
> But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay the spread of disease but don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Instead, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved.
On the H1N1 travel bans:
> Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.”
So, why?
> It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined.
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The article gives a number of examples as well.
That's why staying home from work when sick actually helps.
The article doesn't deny that. One study found exactly what you've claimed.
>A study looking at [the arrival of H1N1 swine flu in 2009] found [travel restrictions] “only led to an average delay in the arrival of the infection in other countries (i.e. the first imported case) of less than three days.”
The problem with quarantines seems to be that their effects are minimal unless you lock everything down AND somehow find and quarantine the already infected who got in, which no country has ever done.