The one being discussed in this thread.
Try it, it’s great fun!
(but I’ve yet to conquer Madagascar as well :()
It doesn’t seem that frightening to me at first glance. They mention 160 fatalities for a disease that spread to 350 villages. Let’s assume 500 persons by village, that would be a population of 175 000. Thousands of people would be bedridden. Say 5000. Let’s assume recovery takes 3 weeks, or roughly 20 days(or at least that people produce antibodies after three weeks). Out of the 5000, 20 die each day.
With these assumptions, we get an infection rate of about 3%, and 8% of those infected dying. Not exactly pleasant, but that’s a long way from being as frightening as, say, Ebola.
Now, what kind of medical attention do these people get? Apparently almost none. It’s mentioned that in one of the villages, a doctor came once, two weeks ago. No medical team was dispatched to the area yet. The sanitary conditions, according to the article, are terrible.
So, we’ve have a population, living in a very unsanitary environment, lacking almost any form of medical help, a disease appears, less than 5% of them get it, and less than 10% of those die. There are tons of well known diseases that would be much more lethal than that in such conditions. What about cholera, for instance? The plague?
Now, I pulled my figures out of thin air, and the situation might be more worrisome than that. And there’s the issue of the nature of the disease being unknown (but then again, is it that surprising given that the only doctors present seem to be local doctors who show up in a given place once every two weeks?).
All in all, I don’t think there’s any evidence at this point that we’re looking at an unknown disease, with a high lethality rate and no known treatment, and with a potential to become a pandemic.
Reading the rest of the thread, I see the disease has been identified as malaria. So, my point was moot.
But still, well made and thought through – people tend to launch themselves into a panic over almost nothing*, and it’s good to see a little reason used against that.
*Particularly if they are inhabitants of Madagascar. Paranoid fuckers.
That article is lacking. How will hypochondriacs know what to worry about if the only symptom they mention is fever?