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Forums - General Discussion - Bubonic plague outbreak, Ugli Mongolia. (City and plane lock down)

 

Bubonic plague

Sucess 1 16.67%
 
Failure 1 16.67%
 
Indifferent/comments. 4 66.67%
 
Total:6
curl-6 on 09 May 2019
Alby_da_Wolf said:
John2290 said:

Do you think the disease was a success or a failure? It killed a bunch of people, really hit society hard but got wiped off the faxe of the planet yet still finds a way to creep back into humans. Success or failure? Stalemate? 

You should consider that of all the great epidemic diseases of the past, only smallpox has been completely eradicated, the others, including the plague, started being kept under control, with foci spreading less and less, first with better urban and personal hygiene, then, later, with scientific progress (greatest progress came not only from improvements of medicine, but also from widespread replacement of open sewers with buried ones, that weren't a novelty, ancient Romans and other ancient civilisations built them, but in the Middle Ages there had been a regression in hygiene in most parts of Europe, but also Marseille soap and the adoption of cotton, allowing to wash clothes more frequently, helped a lot, like other forms of prevention).

Yeah Plague is one of those diseases that's always going to be around; it's not really viable to eradicate it as it has such a huge host population of animals to hide in.

What makes stuff like Smallpox and Polio vulnerable to extermination is that they can only viably reproduce through infecting people, so if you vaccinate all their potential human hosts, the disease has nowhere to go and dies out.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 09 May 2019

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curl-6 on 18 May 2019
John2290 said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

You should consider that of all the great epidemic diseases of the past, only smallpox has been completely eradicated, the others, including the plague, started being kept under control, with foci spreading less and less, first with better urban and personal hygiene, then, later, with scientific progress (greatest progress came not only from improvements of medicine, but also from widespread replacement of open sewers with buried ones, that weren't a novelty, ancient Romans and other ancient civilisations built them, but in the Middle Ages there had been a regression in hygiene in most parts of Europe, but also Marseille soap and the adoption of cotton, allowing to wash clothes more frequently, helped a lot, like other forms of prevention).

Well doesn't thst still put it in the success camp then cause for all our tools against diseases and not allowing it to have a home anywhere near us it still manages to survive. Small pox = failure, Plague = success I would reckon but the human race wins against both.  

If the measure for success or failure is survival then every disease is a success except for the two we've so far exterminated; Smallpox and Rinderpest. Polio and Guinea Worm are on the brink but the last isolated pockets are proving the hardest to finish off due to factors like danger to health workers, lack of accessibility, and poor infrastructure in the remaining few endemic countries.



curl-6 on 19 May 2019
John2290 said:
curl-6 said:

If the measure for success or failure is survival then every disease is a success except for the two we've so far exterminated; Smallpox and Rinderpest. Polio and Guinea Worm are on the brink but the last isolated pockets are proving the hardest to finish off due to factors like danger to health workers, lack of accessibility, and poor infrastructure in the remaining few endemic countries.

I hear smallpox is held in government facilities, it may make a come back and if I am Pilgrim is any indication, in quite a big way, it'll be partying out the gates of those faciloties until we are complete failures. 

Smallpox samples are indeed kept in high security labs in both the US and Russia, yes. And if it ever did get loose, yeah it would be absolutely catastrophic. Aside from military personnel nobody is vaccinated against it anymore, and we know from history that when Smallpox breaks out in an unvaccinated population the result is utter carnage. (See the native populations of the Americas in the years following contact with Europeans)

That said, we do at least have a working vaccine against it, but probably nowhere near enough of it stockpiled to stem a global pandemic, unless we are able to quickly isolate it in the very early stages, like when ten or less people are infected, quarantine those people, and vaccinate all their contacts.

I honestly wouldn't worry about it though, of all the things that could kill millions of people in the foreseeable future, there are many more probable threats than Smallpox, scary as it is.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 19 May 2019

Alby_da_Wolf on 21 May 2019
curl-6 said:
John2290 said:

I hear smallpox is held in government facilities, it may make a come back and if I am Pilgrim is any indication, in quite a big way, it'll be partying out the gates of those faciloties until we are complete failures. 

Smallpox samples are indeed kept in high security labs in both the US and Russia, yes. And if it ever did get loose, yeah it would be absolutely catastrophic. Aside from military personnel nobody is vaccinated against it anymore, and we know from history that when Smallpox breaks out in an unvaccinated population the result is utter carnage. (See the native populations of the Americas in the years following contact with Europeans)

That said, we do at least have a working vaccine against it, but probably nowhere near enough of it stockpiled to stem a global pandemic, unless we are able to quickly isolate it in the very early stages, like when ten or less people are infected, quarantine those people, and vaccinate all their contacts.

I honestly wouldn't worry about it though, of all the things that could kill millions of people in the foreseeable future, there are many more probable threats than Smallpox, scary as it is.

Not to mention that in countries, even very rich ones, with low public funding for health and high household debt, a credit crunch could kill more people than any plague could in a modern country with modern and effective health system, through a wide range of common diseases that normally would have far lower mortality. Fundamentalist tycoons, instead of funding terrorists, a risky business, could just buy as many banks as possible, then they could kill millions without any bomb and in a totally legal way, heck, they could even seize the properties of the people they try to kill.



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