Well if ebola ever got loose in say, India or China or some other high density population area, would be an absolute catastrophe..
“Well if ebola ever got loose in say, India or China or some other high density population area, would be an absolute catastrophe..”
Yes, it would. So far it is unlikely because those who contract the virus become extremely ill very quickly, so they are unable to infect a lot of people. If that changes, then it could be disastrous. Public health professionals need to be aware of this disease, and so do medical professionals if they want to keep this virus from spreading.
Informing the public of symptoms and locations of outbreak serves a pretty major purpose in protecting the public. People need to be aware, so quarantines can be implemented quickly and effectively if an outbreak is found.
To all those who think that the purpose of publishing this information is to panic the public, you need to look at the bigger picture. In the case of an infectious disease outbreak, an informed public, informed medical personnel at all levels, and competent public health officials is what will eventually protect us from an Ebola outbreak in the US -—or not.
Ebola kills too quickly to be an epidemic threat. It’s certainly bad for those who get it, but it is self-limiting in that the host doesn’t usually live long enough to spread it to the general population. SARS, H5N1 influenza, and other contagious diseases have an incubatation period that exceeds a week and that allows for lots of time for a host to share his problem with a large amount of people.