Our work has relevance for important public health issues: if a novel disease is detected in a rural setting, and it appears to be spreading, how feasible is it to contain infection by restricting movements to and from the village? Our results suggest that first, an infeasibly tight level of quarantine would be required for any chance of containment, corresponding to enforcing a low level of vcw in Figure 6 . To all intents and purposes isolation would have to be absolute to be effective. In most circumstances such extreme intervention would not be acceptable. Second, given typical mobility patterns, it is likely that once there is a detectable number of cases in the village, there may already be a significant number of cases outside of it. Therefore quarantining interventions are likely to come too late.