Friday, August 1, 2014

Is it logical for the rest of the country to bring an infected Ebola Patient to the U.S.?

Though I think it is wonderful for the U.S. citizen being treated here in Georgia, I wonder about the logic of this for the rest of us over 300 million Americans. The reason I'm saying this is the laws of probability are in full swing.

There is a saying, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong in some situations" and I hope bringing this infected Ebola patient isn't one of these cases.

The American Doctor and the lady fighting for her life also from the U.S. now infected with Ebola likely took every precaution in dealing with the Ebola patients they cared for. However, they still got infected somehow. How do we know the same won't happen here?

Here in the U.S. we have this elitist notion that nothing seriously wrong can happen here. However, I think this is just another elitist notion waiting for it's bubble to be popped by "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong in some situations".

So, I think bringing ANYONE to the U.S. infected with Ebola is a really crazy and dangerous idea at present.

For example, the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 killed more U.S. soldiers than died in World War I.

1918 flu pandemic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
Wikipedia
Jump to Spanish flu research - Main article: Spanish flu research. An electron micrograph showing recreated 1918 influenza virions. Centers for Disease ...

The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[30] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people,[4] while current estimates say 50–100 million people worldwide were killed.[31]
This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death.[32] It is said that this flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.[33]
end partial quote from:

1918 flu pandemic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So,  not only did this pandemic kill more U.S. soldiers than died in World War I it is now thought that up to 100 million people died from it today.

almost 2 billion people were alive in 1918 which means that 5% of the world's population was killed by the last big pandemic in 1918.

If I did that correctly I divided 100 million by 2 billion and got .05 which I interpret as 5%

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