I was curious about being quarantined at home with TB, and I found a brochure about "home isolation" from my very own Orange County public health agency here.

You'll note that special high efficiency filtration systems are NOT required. The brochure advises you to open your windws and get good ventilation, but that's it. Notice that the brochure does NOT require care givers or the patient to wear a mask at home around each other. As I was saying before, TB is not a terribly infectious disease, relative to something like influenza. Of course, the risk is still there, and in the case of crowded conditions like a prison or health care setting, then the consquences and risk of multiple people getting infected (especially with a drug resistant strain) outweighs the relatively small risk of spreading it. However, in the home setting, the expense and hassle of using multiple masks a day outweigh are generally thought to be too high a "cost" compared to the protective benefits to the single care giver, like a spouse.

Actually, doing a bit more digging, I was surprised to find that there is almost no evidence that high filtration ventilation systems significantly reduce the risk of spreading infectious TB. Interesting. Theoretically, it should, which is why it is done, but it hasn't been proven yet. In general, what seems to be shown to increase your risk is time spent in the same room, or being in a poorly ventilated area with someone with active TB. As far as official recommendations go for a TB isolation ward, a ventilation system that can do nine air changes an hour, venting to the outside, is optimal, but filtration is not required.

Anyway, read this brochure and then think about what Mr. Daniels is going through. Yes, he knowingly appeared in public without a mask and he does have a dangerous, drug resistant strain of TB and for that, he should be forced to do certain things to protect the public. But it's not like he had Ebola or smallpox, and it's not like the movie Hot Zone where everyone in your neighborhood drops dead with blood gushing out of every bodily orifice within a few hours either.

By the way, extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) is not synomymous with "incurable". It varies by individual set of circumstances, of course, like whether powerful antibiotics are available, but best case, roughly a quarter to a third of people with active XDR-TB disease can be cured. So, Mr. Daniels could walk out in public again some time down the road.