| John2290 said: Indeed it could but it's highly unlikely with modern technology for information and obviously better medicine and knowledge. We'd really have to fuck up badly for it to get that bad. It'll be interesting to see how countries can manage something this bad and like I said maybe it will cripple the whole damn thing enough for the worst to happen but for my own sanity I have to believe we are advanced enough at this point to manage something on the scale of the spanish flu and reduce the impact to a fraction. A vaccine will come far, far sooner than any in time in the past, including just a decade ago with the H1N1 scare. Fingers crossed cause if tens of millions die it will fuck us bad for the next half decade, some third world countries would be totally obliterated. |
The experts don't share the same faith though. Testing all arriving passengers (2.7 million airline passengers daily) is beyond our modern capabilities and no one wants to shut the borders down since the economy is more important.
18 months is already a very optimistic estimate to assemble a vaccine that then still has to be mass produced and distributed, while convincing the anti vaxxers as well. The WHO is doing a great job so far but the odds are heavily stacked against them.
Meanwhile the commercials to promote cheap holidays continue as usual, the economy comes first. I wonder if Trump is going to downplay the whole thing tonight and just spout some of the usual usa is great nonsense.
With an incubation period of 2 to 14 days, let's say a week before getting contagious and only infecting 2 others, it would take 33 weeks for one case to turn into 8 billion. 95% of people will be all right, but yep, it can get ugly. Slowing it down is the current strategy.
