Posted on 10/09/2014 6:06:39 PM PDT by BenLurkin
“...so we can hunker down and hopefully survive until this blow over. I wonder how long that will take?”
Big Pandemics like Black Plague or Spanish Flu have had big runs of about two years.
Every disease is different of course, and ebola (although really bad) does not have the worst characteristics possible. People are infectious for a relatively short time, mostly while they are showing clear symptoms. Transmission is strong only through close contact (blood, sweat, tears, mucus, semen, etc.).
Ebola is an organism that evolves relatively quickly though, so differences could emerge and change things for the better or the worse. Perversely, a strain that kills more quickly has advantages, in that it has less time to spread. If new strains emerge that spread in new ways (airborne, or after surviving on surfaces longer) then it would intensify the epidemic.
Over the course of an epidemic or pandemic, behavior typically changes, and reduces the rate of infection. Treatments or vaccines could be developed. Protective measures could have a big impact, such as effective quarantine, avoiding contact, protections from bodily fluids, and disinfection.
You would not want to ride crowded mass transit every day in a city with a high rate of infection. When epidemics get really bad, moving out to the countryside has been among the most effective protections.
If an epidemic inflicts mass casualties, complex systems can start to degrade or fail, like electrical blackouts, food production or delivery disruptions, water or sewage treatment problems, roads not plowed from snow and so on. Modern disasters like Hurricane Katrina show that security can break down. Historically, secondary effects like this can be significant killers.
In the wake of a mass casualty epidemic, economies usually crash, and the balance of political power shifts. Epidemics were key to enabling the Spanish Conquistadors to conquer the Incas, opening Western expansion to the Americans, and for the Muslims to conquer the Persians. So things don’t always go back to the status quo ante. Your job might not be there after a massive epidemic.
So if you want to plan for a worst case, it is roughly two years worth of food in a rural home, with the ability to raise your own food, during and after.
What I would consider a more likely case, would be to shelter in place - have a deep pantry of favorite foods (buying the big bundles from Costco or Sams Club), so that you would not have to go out much, and make arrangements to telecommute if things get hot, then be attentive to avoiding infection.
Maybe you are realistic, given his patterns of behavior.
Compared to 18 million? AIDS is preventable.
36 million so far and still going strong for AIDs and this is the 21st century, almost a hundred years later.
The locations where the 0bama regime dumped the foreign invaders coincide with where the largest outbreaks have occurred. Since "the one" never admits to a mistake and won't allow the stat run media to report his blunders, we probably won't get official confirmation.
The nurse at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital who earlier this week became the first person outside west Africa to contract Ebola, told media outlets in Spain that she may have accidentally touched her face with one of her gloved hands as she removed her protective gear.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ebola-spread-shows-flaws-in-protective-gear-and-procedures/
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