@SpukiKitty #32238
“…like SARS, Ebola and Swine Flu…“
One of these is not like the others, though. SARS and swine and bird flu were both good examples but ebola is a much different animal(in a manner of speaking) than that. We were never in any danger of it in the west, it only ever spread in Africa, because of the miniscule hygenic and general life quality standards in most African countries(notice south Africa is much better off and they only ever had a couple infections despite being connected to the rest of the continent). Ebola doesn’t spread like a flu or a cold, it actually requires serious direct contact with the infected body fluids and it manifests(and kills) much too quickly, to be a real danger society-wise. It’s the things that spread really easily and can hide themselves off in a host for weeks at a time with no symptoms, that are the pandemic makers. Ebola is very much like black death, it can only reap through if the conditions are just right and you have literal unwashed masses living in extreme poverty in cramped conditions, with lots of cretinious superstitions about corpse disposal. This is more of a “bioweapon” virus, something you develop in a lab and disperse over hostile territory to quickly kill off the manpower and move in once the enemy is all done puking their guts out(till rather recently I was myself labouring under a conviction that ebola was actually a soviet bio-warfare project from the 70s that somehow got out during the cold war), since it doesn’t hang around too long either, compared to flu-likes which are perfectly evolved little parasites, the fact that they most usually don’t kill or even cause permanent damage is actually very much to their advantage. Basically when it comes to virai, you have either the ones that spread easily, infect easily and most likely won’t end you or even disable you permanently and we have the heavy duty shit that actually kills you quickly and brutally and could potentially lead to corpses piling on the streets and mass extinction but they would need very specific conditions, because their infection and spread rates are much restricted. Course we used to have the deadliest of them all, the ones who did both well(few and far between as they always were) but hey, polio’s dead as long as we can keep it that way…
Sorry for the TED talk, I’m a bit of a epidemiologist hobbyist, I know, weird hobby to have but one does not choose consciously what appears fascinating to them.