[vetvetdoug]

I have read about how the Influenza outbreak of 1918 slowly spread in the face of albeit poor disease prevention measures. The parallels with today's Zebola outbreak are remarkable. I also personally watched the VEE outbreak in horses in 1971 come across the border and spread like wildfire as veterinarians stood by helplessly. If it hadn't been for the USAF having VEE vaccine in storage the disease would have wiped out horses in the US.

My concerns are a) controls to keep the disease out of the US are non existent b) our immigration policy and border is porous and Zebola and vector borne hemorrhagic diseases can enter easily. c) The patient zero's possible contacts are not being strictly quarantined. Zebola is not a common cold and is a game changer in any society.

[Sherman Logan]

The first confirmed case of “Spanish flu” was in March 1918.

By October 4 to 6 million Americans had the flu during that one month, and 200,000 of them died, that month. That’s leaving out the many millions elsewhere in the world.

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to call that a “slow spread.”

By comparison, we reportedly have <10,000 confirmed cases in Africa to date. That’s since December and in third world sanitary conditions and crowding. To my mind that rate of spread indicates it just isn’t very contagious from an epidemiological POV, or we’d have cases in the six or seven figure range by now, not in four figures.

Also, a couple of infected people got into Nigeria some time back, but they’re presently reporting only about 20 cases. I believe we can do a better job of controlling spread than Nigeria.

[Kartographer]

I wonder if a FReeper will report me to the admin for posting this like they did before? ;-)