Picture this: you board a cruise ship in the Antarctic, come into contact with a fellow passenger who falls ill, and land home in America only to find federal officers escorting you to a quarantine facility in Nebraska — not because you are sick, but because a government agency decided you might be. That is roughly what happened to Angela Perryman, an American who sailed aboard the MV Hondius and was exposed to another passenger carrying Andes virus, a rare type of hantavirus. She has been fighting a federal quarantine order ever since, asking instead to isolate at home in Florida. So far, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not budged.

What makes this story stranger is the science — or rather, the absence of it. Andes virus is not easily passed from person to person. It spreads mainly through contact with infected rodents, and human-to-human transmission is considered rare. Even Michael Bell, a senior CDC official, reportedly concluded that Perryman could quarantine safely at home with daily remote monitoring.

And yet the mandatory, facility-based order stands.