What do you guys think are some likely diseases that could turn into a worldwide pandemic, and the repercussions it could cause in society? I personally think it is likely to be an airborne virus with a 2 - 3 week incubation period. This would allow for a large amount of people to be infected. If you don't start seeing symptoms in people until a few thousand are already infected, that would not be a good thing. Obviously the disease would be deadly (probably around a 60 - 80 percent death rate).
The worst kind of epidemic I can think of, aside from zombies, are Parasites. Imagine A tiny parasite, not visible to the human eye that spreads in the thousands through water, and grows up to eat you from the inside out. It would specifically target a specific organ, like say, your brain. Maybe it could paralyze you too. No idea how possible it is, but idea of it creeps me the fuck out. I hate parasites.
It's called a pandemic. An epidemic is in a small area or country, when it gets world wide it is called a pandemic. So instead of calling it a "world wide epidemic" you just call it a pandemic. The more you know.
I think the worst case would come from an airborne virus that mimics the symptoms of the common cold or another undeadly ailment, which would lead people to think it isn't deadly and by the time people figure out what's wrong millions would be infected.
We already have good pandemics we could release any time in laboratories everywhere. A Dutch guy made one in his spare time, in fact.
I predict that everywhere apart from Madagascar would die! On a serious note, I highly doubt that any modern disease would be able to have any significant effect unless it took weeks, or even months to manifest itself. Think about the spread of Swine Flu, Bird Flu etc etc and how the media hyped up the dangers of it. It would be dealt with quickly and effectively if it were ever similar to them. If not the repurcussions could be devestating, even if it killed of around 5% of the worlds population. That would be 50,000,000 deaths in China alone. I doubt that we would have the resources to dispose of that many bodies if it happened inside one year, and it was worldside. This would have a significant effect on the world. It would devestate infrastructure, production, leave cities vastly unpopulated. In worse hit areas it could lead to hunger riots. There be a considerable amount of consequences that could lead to a vast shift in political, social and economic well being across the globe. To sum up, it would be the biggest event since the death of the last dinosaur.
Pandemics are finicky things. I doubt we could ever have one in 1st world countries, what with our hygiene. But most of us overcompensate with hygiene which doesn't allow our immune system to develop resilience because we don't give it any diseases to dispose of. If the disease is airborne there is not much you can do to contain the spread of it aside from masks, and even then you're still likely to catch it. Then we can just isolate ourselves and gorge on anti-biotics. If a disease actually manages to get past all that, including vaccines, we will be well and truly fucked, as panic spreads at a very rapid rate nowadays. The panic and sheer desperation that the spread of a new disease creates inflicts more damage than the disease itself, eg. swine flu.
Yes, you are right, I should have caught that. Can a mod change the name of the thread from epidemic to pandemic please? And here I am wanting to be in the CDC..... Well, I'm looking for worst case scenarios, I do know that many diseases are false alarms, or easy to contain. Like Swine Flu, as you mentioned. Also Ebola, which if it was ever released into a major population center, would kill very fast. Ebola, however, has two major defects. One, it kills within days or even sometimes a matter of hours. This causes it to quickly simply burn out, because it does not infect enough people. Second, I believe Ebola needs a tropical climate, and I'm pretty sure it would have trouble surviving in say, Europe, Canada, or the US. You are completely right. Not to mention the panic and complete break down of government and social services that it would cause. As @Toast post stated. It would completely change the political landscape, and many rogue governments would take the chance to act. The only really plausible way a pandemic would enter a first world country is through aircraft flights. One tourist gets infected in Africa or Asia. He flys back to say, New York. He infects everyone on the plane. The people on the plane infect other people in the airport that are also getting on planes. It then proceeds to spread across the world via air travel before the government even begins to see a major threat. And then, you have a massive pandemic on your hands. Yes, but many of our naturally engineered diseases are designed to kill fast and then burn out, so that they don't spread. Unfortunately, we can't really field test this and we are sitting on a biological time bomb, because if even one of those diseases leaks from a laboratory in or near some city, we have a major epidemic at the very least, which could become a pandemic if the incubation period is, as I said before, long enough. Parasites will not really develop into an epidemic or pandemic. They are not airborne, and only travel really through contaminated food/water. Its not too plausible for a parasite epidemic to start, in fact I do not think it has ever happened. Yes, these things scare the fuck out of me too, but rest assured, there is a very low chance of a parasite pandemic. Not to mention, while parasites may spread faster in 3rd world countries, in first world countries they will not spread because of water treatment, basic facilities, etc. Parasites cannot spread across open water because they need a host to live. Therefore, a parasite epidemic in say, Africa, would not spread to the Americas, or probably any farther than the Middle East. And finally, parasites are quite easy to treat (once again, in first world countries), as opposed to viruses, for which we have no cure. Sorry for the long post guys, if you can't tell this subject extremely interests me.
