Quarantine story

USNavInstituteBlog tells the story of how a local USN officer worked to stop the spread of Spanish Flu into American Somoa

 He imposed quarantine. That was harder that it sounds, because of the frequent family visits between West Samoa and American Samoa – but Poyer also had the support of the local chiefs, who understood how serious imported epidemics could be. The people of American Samoa self-blockaded, on top of official quarantine: they sent out canoes to stop any and all visitors. They never had a single case.

in other nearby islands, the mortality was 20 percent, partly from the flu because everyone was sick at the same time, so there was no one well enough to care for the sick and do the necessary nursing, cooking and keeping them clean.

But it also was complicated because a lot of their food came from local gardens, and there was no one left to cultivate/harvest and plant crops. So many died of hunger related complications in the recovery phase of the illness.

Note the importance of working with the local officials, who then worked with the locals to obey the quarantine.
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update:

So when I hear about China shutting down entire cities in quarantine, it makes one wonder if the disease is so terrible they don't want it to spread, or maybe they want to slow the spread of the disease so not everyone is sick at the same time, meaning hospitals are too full to take new patients, nurses and other medical personnel are too sick to treat them (25 percent of cases reported are in medical personnel), etc.

If you control the disease, not only do fewer people catch it, but it means that people who have recovered and are immune are now healthy enough to care for the new sick patients.