[Bobalu]

Oddly, a rate over 90% can stop the spread of a disease if people die quickly and it burns itself out.

If it had a 50% rate then it would consume all medical resources for care of the recovering patients...there would be few resources available to try to stop the spread of the virus.

90% = earlier Ebola epidemics that burned themselves out.
50% = the Black Plague.
10% = the killer flu that went around the world during WW1.

[jjsheridan5]

Oddly, a rate over 90% can stop the spread of a disease if people die quickly and it burns itself out.

Not true at all, yet parroted endlessly. Once you are symptomatic enough to either be self-isolating, immobile, or so symptomatic that any rational person would avoid you, it makes no difference to the virus' long-term "plans" whether you live or die (although through dying, it opens up other vectors, which would help the virus, not hurt it). What matters is the period before that level of symptomatic-ness, to coin a phrase, occurs. That is going to be a function of a number of things, none of which includes whether the host ultimately dies or survives (although there may be an indirect relationship between fatality rate, and those other factors).

[GOPJ]

90% = earlier Ebola epidemics that burned themselves out.

50% = the Black Plague.

10% = the killer flu that went around the world during WW1.

It's also moved into cities for the first time... . Another problem is people stay relatively healthy until shortly before death. That allow more time for the sick to walk around and spread the disease...

The CDC's on top of it... well, just kidding - they're not doing crap to help citizens except to tell people that being overweight in bad for your health. If this comes here because the CDC didn't close down flights between here and the hot zone - they should be defunded...