A high mortality rate is no guarantee that there will be no epidemic. The average Ebola victim is contagious for about as long as the average flu victim, and flu doesn't have any problem propagating in that time. The low level of airborne transmission is probably more important. If there were an outbreak many times of what we've seen previously, presumably people would take measures to lower person-to-person contact, which would cause the epidemic to die out.
I was going to say pretty much this. Quite informative.
In my opinion, I wouldn't be worried so much about a global pandemic from Ebola (as you point out it is unlikely to happen). Instead I'd be worried about a few cases hitting the US (or some industrialized nation's shores) and then watching mass chaos and panic break out as people go crazy. You'd probably get more people killed from the riots, panic, looting and mass tomfoolery than you would from the actual virus itself. If anything it would probably go down like in the book "Executive Orders" by Tom Clancy although that book supposes it was due to a terrorist attack by Islamic lunatics and not dropped off via a sick international traveler.
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I find the perils of the Hollywood movie-style mass hysteria panic are generally very overstated. At the beginning of a real crisis, people are generally very calm. Yes, this kind of panic does set in eventually, but it generally appears much later than most people suppose.
Someday we're going to have another truly deadly plague which is quick. AIDS counts as such a plague, but it's too slow for people to get that excited about. Ebola or avian influenza could easily mutate to be such a plague, but it could as easily be something else, and there's really no reason to think that such a thing happening tomorrow is any more likely than it has been for most of the past century.
I find the perils of the Hollywood movie-style mass hysteria panic are generally very overstated. At the beginning of a real crisis, people are generally very calm. Yes, this kind of panic does set in eventually, but it generally appears much later than most people suppose.
I wish I could share your optimism, but I'll settle for hoping none of us ever finds out who is right. All I can say is look at the trouble after Katrina, a situation where it was confined to a region and everybody knew that within a week or two things would be "okay." Now multiply that across an entire nation, decrease the availability of outside police, national guard, etc (since they'll all be helping out in their own communities there will be no surge capacity like we saw in the south after Katrina) and jack up the uncertainty by a factor of 11. I doubt it would be pretty. Sure the majority of us would survive but I think things could get a bit unpleasant in the interim.
Heck, look at the "snow rage" that reportedly occurred in Washington state this week (people shooting at snowplows and other generalized idiocy). Imagine what it would be like after being told to remain in your home for a month or two on end.
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What trouble after Katrina? Yes, New Orleans was getting ready to explode when help arrived, but it takes longer than people including the news media expect.
One guy shooting at someone annoyingly honking their horn is a statewide epidemic of snow rage? What day doesn't have plenty of generalized idiocy?
So the cops caught on tape looting the stores in uniform and the other shenanigans don't count?
Sure, it wasn't as bad as the media at the time hyped it up to be, but it was still pretty bad in comparison to every day life.
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So, would you characterize Katrina as "...watching mass chaos and panic break out as people go crazy. You'd probably get more people killed from the riots, panic, looting and mass tomfoolery... ?"
Probably not, but then again as I pointed out it was confined to one area and there was a significant (albeit late) "surge response" in the form of national guard troops and others from out of the affected zone. You wouldn't have that in a pandemic spread across the entire country so there would be more of a chance of things getting out of control.
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If you like imagining just what sort of disease could wipe out humanity - here's a game/simulator for you Pandemic (you may need a facebook acct.)
"...when theft and high crime becomes obscenely obvious to even the blindest beer sucking idiot, it is always the Republicans who are in office." -- Joe Bageant
Oh that thing? I hate Madagascar.
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