Agreed that there are costs, but 35 to 1. If you're not categorically opposed to quarantine, that probably makes it on cost-benefit terms.

Is that 35-1 difference because of the quarantine, though? I thought we were supposed to know better than to conflate correlation and causation? The former might wink and nudge, but that doesn't actually make it correct -- especially when we're talking vastly different sets.

Cuba's first known cases of HIV didn't show up until 1985, the majority of the island's population was socially and politically isolated, the island's blood transfusion system was very easily isolated, and the place at least claims to have vastly lower illegal IV drug use. Contrast the United States, which has confirmed cases at least as far back as 1968 (West Hunter's estimate of first noticed cases in 1981 is highly off : GRID was proposed as a name that year), had and continues to have serious abuse of IV heroin, and by the invention of the ELISA blood test already had people receiving infected blood transfusions.

These are not similar groups. The low rate of infection in Cuba tells us that one or more of these matters probably explains the large difference, but as the number of differences increase the certainty that the quarantine was responsible or even helped decreases. If you look to other countries with similarly low infection rates -- Finland as one high-profile example -- you don't see such heavy-handed quarantines. This doesn't tell us anything for certain, but it's a pretty strong hint.