Last Thoughts For Now: The Nightmare



Imagine Team Mo has sent 1 (or 19, or 50, or 200) guys infected with Ebola here.
They'll be asymptomatic for 7-20 days, on average, including at any cursory
intake screening. They could come from 40+ countries before arrival.
So, pick them out of the above crowd. You have a 1
(or 19, or 50, or 200) in 300M chance. Good luck, Jim.

From conversation at dinner last night (and I owe you one next trip), and a comment elsewhere today:

"This is still not Africa’s century. When, not if this virus becomes weaponized, it will be brought here to the Blue Hives first. Then it will spread and Hell will be upon us."

My last thoughts on the Ebola topic, until this gets to the next stage (arrival in a major international city, and/or inter-continental travel and spread documented):

I expected Team Mo to take that approach last time.

Sooner or later, that penny will drop.

Clancy's template for that was in print worldwide 22 years ago, so it's not like I'm giving anyone any ideas.

He novelized aerosol delivery, which even in the book failed to fully work.

But taking things the next step and doing it would be easier without that bit of literary cleverness. If they simply infected people and sent them here while freshly infected and asymptomatic, with orders to burn their papers, hide their identities, and circulate until unable, a dozen such not-so-smart bombs who subsequently founded outbreak clusters solely at malls and amusement parks would completely overwhelm any ability to deal with the disease short of bringing all of American society to a grinding halt for months. They could do this indefinitely, and vector it in from 40 countries tomorrow, and we wouldn't even know we were under attack for a month or more.

Getting a handle on the disease - anywhere - depends absolutely on the idea that people want to help track their contacts. People committed to hide and lie about where they've been and where they've merrily sown microbial Hell screw that pooch in a gang-bang. In about 0.2 seconds.

And also noted by Clancy last century, "You can't expect them to stay stupid forever."

What some of the geniusii hereabouts fail to comprehend is not the direct problem of Ebola outbreak(s) here, horrific as that alone would be.

The true problem is the secondary and tertiary effects when a growing and absolutely non-zero portion of Americans, notably truck and rail delivery chains, and first responders from police, fire, EMS and medical personnel, decide "Fuck that, I'm staying home starting tomorrow, until further notice, because my paycheck isn't a death pact." Like. They. WILL.

Three days later we start running out of things like gasoline and food resupply (not everywhere, but it doesn't take much to much to go from concern to stupid to panic), and it snowballs from there.
Perception is reality, and America closed for months is 9/11 to the tenth power. They got 19 hijackers here, no problem.

19 @$$holes infected with Ebola and set loose would probably top that tally eventually, but financially, they could crash the Western world, with 19 injections, 19 one-way plane tickets, and a few weeks' spending money and tourist itineraries, and whilst breaking exactly no US laws other than the original conspiracy.

There's also no reason to stop at 19. Doing 50 or 200 would be little more complicated, and they could come in waves, a week apart.

Pleasant dreams.