The distortion band is often introduced as a medical danger zone. That is true, but it is not the whole reason institutions care so much about it.
What makes the band politically charged is that it threatens continuity judgment. A returnee may be coherent enough to speak, reason, and describe the experience while still forcing every surrounding system to ask whether ordinary authority can resume. That is a governance problem even before it becomes a biomedical one.
This is why distortion-band policy so often sounds more constitutional than clinical. Quarantine, staged authority restoration, witness logs, and review boards exist because institutions need a way to remain procedural when certainty about continuity is low. The body is only part of what must be stabilized.