A news report was released by the World Health Organization yesterday about MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Interestingly, it coincided with me prepping for a lecture that I’ll be delivering in a couple of days on the relationship between communicable diseases and apocalyptic events.
The report stated that it’s not an emergency yet.
But it is…
- Growing in severity
- Expanding through the population
- Strikingly similar to other respiratory outbreaks
- Spreading with relatively unknown transmission details
Sure, it’s only killed under a 1000 people so far, so it’s only an emergency to them and not a global emergency, or at least that’s the WHO’s reasoning.
Here’s what I’d like to know and you should be asking about…
Which country will it have to hit before it’s a global emergency? The UK or the USA?
Will officials start misdiagnosing it on purpose so it doesn’t show up as MERS, but just a random flu-like thing?
This message was written by Dr. David Powers. You can always find me at www.drdavidpowers.com. Thanks for reading!
