Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
To me the big question is just how far behind the curve are we and by we I mean all of humanity on dealing with this disease. How long before know that we are closing the gap and we see a decline in the rate of new infections. I don't think that even the best informed can make a reasonable guess at this point.
We are starting to see food shortages and in that area food supply overall is likely to be no more than a few days worth for most of the population. Well, when there's no food available what are people going to do but head out in hopes of finding places where there is some available, even if that means crossing over in to neighboring countries in their search.
Should this horrific disease move in to countries such as India and China in significant amounts then we may very well have a true pandemic with little hope of stopping it and simply having to wait for it to run its course for the most part.
It's estimated that the 1918 flu pandemic killed between 2 and 6 percent of the worlds population. How big a hit we can take before we loose so many that basic infrastructure begins to become unreliable because there are not enough people to maintain and repair the power grid, the transportation systems, etc. We know what happens to the price of gas in this country when one or two refineries get shut down unexpectedly. What happens when the rubber producing plants are down or running at less than half their capacity - simply because they don't have any bodies to do the work? We see a shortage of tires.
In this country thousands of container loads of stuff arrive at our ports each week but if there are not enough qualified people to run those ships, or to load and unload cargo at the ports we have major economic impact from this.
So what scares me about this disease is the big picture if it should turn in to a major pandemic that sweeps around the planet. I'm all for reducing the global population but not this way, not at all.
I'm very concerned that our GOV doesn't seem to be concerned. Why not shut down all flights coming out of countries that have had outbreaks? If you still go you better plan on holding up in a quarantined hotel for 21 days the incubation time.
Send help yes but don't bring the disease back here.
The above post simply serves to illustrate that it is very difficult for civil authorities to formulate and encact measures like those proposed; moreso when multiple nations are involved.
Also, that changes in both techncology and international relations in recent years have made many borders more porous.
And most unsettling of all to his writer, that such measures, if enacted, might be twisted to less-noble ends at some time in the future.
As previously pointed out, the scare sories about Ebola, ISIS and all the other "worries of the day" are heavily slanted toward raising the fears of one segment of the population, and commercial considerations and agendae are part of the equation. Hard science, hard economics and hard numbers don't resonate with the bingo game, lottery ticket and MTV cultures.
Ans censoring the alarmists might tie down a safety valve, but we do need a frim, but monitored and moderated dose of the healthy skepticism toward "pop wisdom" whch used to separate Amercans (and a few other nations) from the rest of the world.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-04-2014 at 07:40 PM..
viruses mutate and become more of a threat, or they die out. Notice that this time, ebola has claimed 10x the number of lives as the previous one? Our PC wont let us just seal off the source country, mostly using mercanaries, so our troops don't bring it home with them. We are insane to risk what we are risking.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,157,672 times
Reputation: 8105
Quote:
Originally Posted by rodentraiser
You guys should have been worried in 2003 when one person with SARS got off a plane in Toronto. That person infected over 400 other people, 44 died, and 25,000 were quarantined. SARS is airborne. Worry about total drug resistant TB, dengue fever which is spreading into Texas (they don't call it breakbone fever for nothing and you can get it multiple times), West Nile, Lyme, and plain old flu. That flu everyone shrugged off in 2009? It killed 12,000 Americans. Ebola? Pfffffffffft.
Yes. I'm particularly amazed that they were able to stop SARS through quarantines.
those other things should have been quarantined, too. No reason to make it worse by not quarantining NOW.
The fact that the poster capitalized the word "now" should tell all of us something -- Namely, that most politicians know that their re-election depends most upon answering to the current whims of the short-sighted and the not-too-astute,
We have any number of serious issues on the horizon, but the best answers won't come from the front row at Wrestlemania, who seldom think beyond next week. And very few, if any of the of the political charlatans to whom they whine will pass up an opportunity to build a bigger bureaucracy, or to aggrandize their own power and influence in the process. When that happens, we all lose.
If this forum is supposed to deal with the concepts of self-protection and self-reliance, precious little of it has been shown in any thread dealing with the issue of ebola and other possible plagues.
Oh, yeah, and don't forget about MERS. A woman deplaned in Austria a couple days ago with MERS. And she was infectious while on the plane. So MERS is now outside of Egypt.
Not concerned at all
Typical media fear tactics used every couple of years.
The first 3 cases of Swine flu in the United States happened 1 mile from my house in San Antonio, Texas
I don't know of anybody else in that area that got swine flu.
I'm not particularly concerned about ebola. I mean, it's not an airborne disease, so basic first world sanitation should keep it in check.
However, it does kind of niggle in the back of my mind that we have the largest isolation unit here in Nebraska.
That means any contagious pandemic could theoretically start here...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
