Plague and Pandemics ...
I can’t remember all of the details, but a couple of years ago I heard a lecture on the radio about potential (natural) biological threats. According to the lecture, there are a handful of characteristics of a virus that are used to determine the potential danger from a virus; and, while I can’t remember them all, they’re features like how long a person is contagious before they demonstrate symptoms because that determines whether it can be contained.
At the time of the lecture, the claim was made that there were a dozen known threats that were 1 trait (most often requiring airborne transmission) away from becoming a pandemic; and there were over 100 known threats that were two traits away from becoming a pandemic.
Now, I want to be clear that the pandemics described are not "Fake" pandemics like Swine-Flu which threaten to kill off 0.05% of the population of a country; they're diseases like Airborne Ebola which has the potential to kill off 90% (or more) of the world’s population.
