Isolate versus Quarantine

A loosely enforced cordon sanitaire during a cholera epidemic in Romania, 1911

Rogue Medic turned me on to a paper looking back at how we handled the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918. I got about half way through when I came across this:

For one, both physicians and patients were often hesitant to bring attention to cases. “Physicians are not reporting their cases to prevent homes from being quarantined.”21 (Note: At the time of the 1918 influenza pandemic, the separation of the ill from the general population, what is now referred to as isolation, was termed “quarantine.”) 

My immediate reaction was "what kind of bullshit is this?" Quarantine was a perfectly cromulant word, one that has a very specific meaning. It's also a word that everyone knows, or should know, and now you want to substitute some mealy mouthed euphemism. Isolate? Really? That's what you do with an engine when you don't want the whole machine to vibrate, or to a variable in an algebraic equation. Even if you restrict the meaning to a person, it's still vague. I mean, take away their cell phone, that will isolate them pretty well. Very irritating.

So I went and looked it up. Here's what the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has to say:

• Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.
• Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.

I'm sorry if I don't see a difference, except if you want to be persnickety, isolate doesn't restrict a person's movements, which seems a tad idiotic. What do you do? Put them in one of those giant inflatable plastic balls? Let's them go anywhere they want carrying their own toxic atmosphere along with them?