Media fear mongering aside (because that is definitely a thing...) if one day by chance mutation or evil design, a virus with high mortality, airborne transmission, and relatively long incubation period emerges.....yeah.....
You mean like Ebola?
China has a lot of people. What is the percentage vs the population of people diagnosed with this new media darling? Remember SARS? How about H1N1?
Take Vitamin C, wash your hands, don't come to work sick, and keep your sick kids at home. Maybe eat better and use a humidifier if the air is dry in your home.
And for God's sake, don't fly sick on a plane
It is airborne in pig to simian transmission with documented cases.Not airborne....
Make Ebola as contagious as influenza and we have a problem.
It is airborne in pig to simian transmission with documented cases.
And yet in your OP you mentioned Mutate....and I simply offered that Ebola would fit the criteria if that happened. Then you jumped on the "but but" wagon that it hadn't happened yet.But has a human transmitted it to another human yet via airborne means while flying in an aluminum tube at 35000 feet? No? Then you're apparently just arguing for argument sake.
So I'll say it again. When Ebola evolves to where it is as transmissible as the flu.... We have a problem.
And yet in your OP you mentioned Mutate....and I simply offered that Ebola would fit the criteria if that happened. Then you jumped on the "but but" wagon that it hadn't happened yet.
And yet in your OP you mentioned Mutate....and I simply offered that Ebola would fit the criteria if that happened. Then you jumped on the "but but" wagon that it hadn't happened yet.
Then I misunderstood your intent in using it as an example, my apologies. I assumed you were taking the position that it fit the criteria and yet the world hadn't ended. I was taking the position that it almost fit the criteria. Now I see we were saying the same thing in different ways.
Yes, if it mutates as such....we have a problem.
If you look at it's history it's a pretty good case study in how human travel and migration greatly impacts a disease's death toll. Early outbreaks were in isolated villages where the nearest next village was days away by foot. Then comes more widespread use of vehicles to those areas. Then comes development and air travel.....
Pretty interesting also on how it was studied decades laterIf you want an interesting read on what happens during a viral outbreak read John M Barry, The Great Influenza. They were rolling down the streets of Philadelphia in wagons pulling the dead out of homes. It started in Kansas in 1918 and killed more in one year than the Black Death killed in a century. More than 100 million died worldwide.
Think it would be frowned upon to spray lysal on everyone I come in contact with in the airport on future flights?
Between tsa and now this you might as well go ahead and look forward to submitting a blood test to fly.
I swear, one day World War Z will be a documentary....
I have friends who work for innocuous biological "research labs" in the WS technology corridor, but their funding comes from the DOD.
Wild?There's a fire.
While it's not a virus (and can thus be countered with antibiotics), imagine if the Plague (yersenia pestis) mutated into a pneumonic variety (as has happened before). Initial symptoms resemble flu, no reason to check for plague. Now picture someone on an international flight with connections in, say, London, DFW, and LAX, traveling through them while contagious.
That's quite a nightmare scenario. How many thousands of people over how much of the world would be infected before anyone really even figured out what was going on?
Wild?
Update on the Wuhan Quarantine...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...r-in-wuhan-as-china-orders-city-into-lockdown
They swear that if there's ever a "Zombie Apocalypse" it will be the result of a modified or mutated rabies virus.View attachment 184563
There's another good book called 'Germs' by Judith Miller, heavy reading.
Although not as educmacated as the Chuckman, I've studied this stuff for many years. I was with SORT for 14 years, wrote the hazmat guidelines and managed the Forsyth Hospital hazmat team for almost 8 years. Whenever you get wind of this kind of stuff don't play it off lightly. There is a game on the Google play app store called Plague Inc. that I have on my phone for when I have absolutely nothing to do. I have destroyed the earth's population more than once just by starting out with a simple cold. It replicates exactly how bioboogers are spread in all forms of transportation. YMMV. I worked with a doc that was at Fort Detrick for several years, the crap he told me made me not really want to leave the house again.
There is a book called 'The Great Influenza' written by John M Barry. Dang near a required reading for us disaster junkies.