Oh, I think he's pulling your leg. Even if he's not, there should be a spoiler statute of limitations. The Stand has been out for, what, 35 years? I'll bet that Gregg has a pretty good idea what happens in this book.:~)
Printable View
You know, until you wrote that and forced me to think about it, I'd have thought it was much newer than that. I read it when it first came out and then read it again when it was re-released with an additional 400 or so pages added. It just doesn't seem like that long ago.
My guess would be that because once it finally does become contagious it becomes REALLY contagious and the procedures to avoid infection are tough to follow perfectly. And imperfection when dealing with a person at the highly infectious stage of the disease has a bad result. In other words, one patient, two medical provider minor, but potentially fatal, errors.
The health care workers weren't fully covered and the patient was spewing contagion copiously from every orifice. Apparently the amount of infectious material they contacted resulted in manageable cases. If medical personnel can isolate infected patients in the three countries where it is active, we should be able to eradicate it. Problem solved.
I'm just skeptical ... I mean if you were dealing with a substance that could easily kill you if it spilled on you, wouldn't you be ... almost psychotically paranoid about any exposure at all?
The number of ebola cases "confirmed or suspected" has tripled in the last month. 4500 to 13000. As far as the US is concerned, yes, problem solved. But isolating cases in the countries suffering? You must be joking. They don't even have bed space for these people, let alone isolation units. Hopefully the US involvement in building more care facilities is paying off, because otherwise, I can't see this ending for the "sick 3" until it plays itself out.
Nigeria is Ebola free now, so they made it work. As far as the other three countries go, if they can educate their citizens about the disease and enlist those who have survived to transport new patients to secure facilities--most likely with international help--they should prevail. As usual, the world community is slow to get off the dime, and that is indeed a problem.
Another issue regarding when a patient becomes contagious seems to be exactly when they cease to be asymptomatic. Officials check for fever: 98.6*, good to go, but what about 98.7*? What about a person, like me, who has a regular body temp that is a little lower? I'm usually in the 96s somewhere so at 98.6* I could be well on the way to being sick, but might waltz right past the check point. The virus knows when it kicks in, the victim's immune system presumably knows as well, but I've yet to hear anyone say there is a hard line between contagious and non-contagious. That just seems like a scenario where there could be a lot of carriers scattered around the world who don't know they were exposed and/or don't realize its ebola until they get REALLY sick.
I've been reading some interesting Ebola information at Natural News.... http://www.naturalnews.com/
Uh Oh Lessisbest...........get ready to dodge the rotten tomatoes................