Small talk with other parents outside my four—year—old’s school isn’t usually difficult. There’s the question of how our little youngsters are getting on with their new teacher, and how we parents are juggling the school routine with work. A couple of times recently, though, I’ve been a bit vague on that latter topic. After all, telling fellow mums and dads that you have just come back from Ebola—hit Liberia is not that easy to drop into casual school—run chat. As a conversation—killer, it’s up there with saying that rather than trick-or—treating, my daughter and I will be opting for a spot of Satanism. Before a team of boiler—suited medics beat their path to my house, let me offer a few words of reassurance.

I’ve been to Liberia twice in the last few months, both times reporting on the Ebola outbreak, and yes, it does involve a certain risk. But like other important stories, such as Syria and Iraq, my editor thinks that it’s worth taking those risks to keep the public informed. Without the first—hand reports showing people dying outside treatment centres, the response to the crisis might not have been as big as it is now. The difference is, of course, that with Ebola, those risks follow you home in a way that bullets, bombs and kidnappers never do. Had I become infected while out there, I could potentially have brought the virus back, and then possibly passed it on to my family and other people.

Luckily, it doesn’t quite work that way. While Ebola does have a three—week incubation period, carriers of the virus are only a danger to others once the symptoms start, and even then, the infectiousness is limited in the early stages. The advice from Public Health England, with whom I am obliged to register, is that until that happens, one is fine to continue life as normal — going to work, dropping children off at school, seeing friends, and so on. Still, it’s one thing to sound reassuring in print. It’s quite another to reassure parents in a playground, many of whom may still take the view that it is better to be safe than sorry. But there is a price to be paid for erring on the side of caution — as is demonstrated by the case this week of Kaci Hickox, an American volunteer with Medicins Sans Frontieres, who has threatened to sue US officials in New Jersey after they tried to have her compulsorily quarantined when she came back from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. On Thursday, she openly defied them, going for a bike ride in front of the assembled media (some of them following so closely that it was clear they didn’t consider her an infection risk). Ms Hickox’s stance has thrown America’s rulers into disarray. Siding with her are the White House and disease control experts, who point out that not only is forced quarantine unnecessary, but the stigma and inconvenience also risk deterring aid workers from helping in West Africa. Bitterly critical of her are the likes of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who says that Ebola is too dangerous a threat to count on a “voluntary” system of quarantine.

The public, meanwhile, are divided, partly according to whether they see aid workers as selfless heroes who need protection, or as Leftie do-gooders. As a journalist, I don’t really fall into either category. But I can’t help sympathising with Hickox. The first three weeks after coming back from Ebola—land are stressful enough as they are — if one gets a headache, severe cold or attack of the runs, there is always that sneaking worry that it might be something worse. The last thing one needs on top of that is to be treated like some sort of leper — which does happen anyway, albeit most often due to ignorance about the real risks of contagion. One British public health expert who was out in Sierra Leone recently made a point of saying during a BBC radio interview that he had gone straight back to work the day after returning home. That, however, did not stop the BBC from deciding that it wasn’t safe to send a crew to interview him face to face. If they’d said that to a person with HIV, there would have been an outcry. Fortunately, Britain has so far steered clear of the kind of compulsory quarantines favoured by New Jersey, although that’s partly because we have so far been spared the kind of Ebola scares that might lead to calls for such measures. Should one happen, though — and I suspect it will — I can only hope that an over—the—top ‘elf and safety culture doesn’t prevail. We rightly protest when that attitude stops villages holding fetes or children throwing snowballs. We should also protest if it gets in the way of aid workers going out to save lives.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2014