Fucking MERS

[bennyboy]

Some of you may know that I'm working in Korea.  Well, some a-hole decided he needed to go ride a camel, and came back, and there's a MERS explosion now.  Mortality rate 40% FUCK.

I run an English school, which is now of course closed, and we're looking at losses of about $10, 000 at least-- possibly more.  And the Koreans are so fucking incompetent at containing this outbreak that I reckon we're about 3 weeks from having guys in bird masks rolling up and down the streets with corpse wagons.

I'm very curious, though.  Are these kinds of things more noticeable these days because our communications are so much better?  Or is the world going to get hit with plague-like waves of death unlike anything the world has seen yet?  I'm kind of thinking we are ALL going to be in the same boat sometime in our lives: someone in the community getting quarantined with a deadly disease, and the world just shutting down and holding it's breath to see if the disease has spread to secondary or tertiary victims.

Oh well, there's good news, too.  I have lots of free time to play GTA V.

[IATIA]

Better communication means higher awareness. Also, higher concentrations of populace equates to increased spreading. So, yes.

[Pyrrho]

Better communication means higher awareness.  Also, higher concentrations of populace equates to increased spreading.  So, yes.

Also, there is increased travel, which increases the spread of disease.  With air travel, one can take a disease pretty much anywhere else in the world in a day.  That was not possible just 100 years ago.  So we have better opportunities for a worldwide plague than in the past.  

Sweet dreams!

[Minimalist]

Are these kinds of things more noticeable these days because our communications are so much better?

I call it the Ted Turner Effect.  Had the Indian Ocean tsunami happened in 1804 instead of 2004 (geologically a tick of the clock) how long would it have taken for news to reach the West?  The fastest communication was a ship under full sail and, had that ship been at sea, they might not have even noticed the tsunami.  Now we have almost constant and immediate contact from the farthest reaches of the globe and we know about events as they happen. 

The world has always had earthquakes, storms, famines, diseases and wars.  What it never had before was a competitive news media shoving these reports down our throats 24/7...until Kim Kardashian gives someone else a blow job and then they forget all about the dead Nepalese.

[Gawdzilla]

This explains the MERS Attacks! emails I've been getting.