Atlanta, London, Boston, Orlando.
Add up the numbers and he likely came in contact with 3,000 people as a minimum with the planes, the airport, the security folks, and the medical staff.
Statistically.....you’d have to figure at least ten got something from him, and they are spreading it currently. Unless luck just happens to occur....I don’t see how you avoid an epidemic on this episode.
I have to admit that I don’t think this was random. How many others like him are among us now?
Ping!
I just read that this is not as “catchy” as we think.
Diversity is so grand isn’t it?
Is this a biological attack on the U.S.?
Important note: the incubation period for MERS-CoV is usually about five days, but can be as long as 14 days.
In practical terms, when someone displays symptoms, it means that every human contact they have had in the last two weeks is at risk, and if they were infected, the clock is running for them to exhibit symptoms.
This is why potentially epidemic causing pathogens needs to be thought of as “coming in waves.” It also means that there are “troughs between the waves” that can last up to two weeks when nobody seems to be sick, and the inclination is to think the danger has passed.
It also indicates to some extent *how* the disease is being passed. If people are exhibiting symptoms sporadically, then they were likely infected one or a few individually. But if a whole bunch of people show symptoms at once, they may have all been infected at the same time.
Then there is as yet little understood phenomenon of individuals who are “super carriers”. Unlike most people, who might infect a few others, super carriers can infect dozens. The classical example is Typhoid Mary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary
And this brings up those who are infected and communicable, but never develop disease symptoms. Because of this they are seldom detected, so are not isolated, and can continue to infect during much of the time others would have been incapacitated with symptoms.
Has anyone read or heard any mention about the “families” these two MERS infected health care workers were visiting in the U.S.? The Indiana patient is supposedly a U. S. Citizen. The Orlando patient, a Saudi, was supposedly visiting family.
Orange Memorial Hospital - great choice for a disease epicenter... People from all over the world come to Orlando.
If “Homeland Security’ wanted to do something to protect the American people (rather than protect corrupt paranoid democrats) they could start by restricting visitation from Muslim countries...