Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
Certainly.

SARS specifically stuck in my head, becuase back in January things were going haywire in China and I was thinking we need to shut all travel down immediately. I asked a close friend his thoughts, and he said it looks like people are overreacting and the virus will probably just fizzle out like SARS.

It boils down to people just not paying attention and/or not knowing how this stuff works. They don't realize that when there is a big enough virus outbreak with high enough uncertainty about its impact, it needs to be shut down ASAP. You can't wait until after you get enough deaths to worry you. By then you're already cooked.
There's a lot humanity can learn from this which hopefully makes it easier to control future outbreaks. First thing to do when there's a potential pandemic is... shut the borders immediately. People should be prepared too, by having a month of essentials in stockpile.