Its just as apart of nature as humans are. Some argue that its natures way of “cleaning” and some say its the apocalypse. Outbreaks of illnesses are common on planet earth. The Bubonic plague, the Spanish Flu, Yellow Fever, all of these caused wide spread panic and lots of death. Living in the United States right now could we survive an epidemic/pandemic, or Ebola outbreak? The answers may shock some.

LiveScience.com staff writer Elizabeth Palermo says our chances of survival are better than the residents in Africa had. The mortality rate for the average infected person in Africa in the recent Ebola scare was 50%. That meant 1 out of two people who had it would die. 50% is a number that was discovered based on location and how bad the Ebola strain was. Ebola is a nasty virus that basically makes your body liquefy and you bleed out your eyes, ears, nose, and other places. Now if the Ebola virus was to find itself in America, which is highly unlikely expressed by the CDC, that our chances of survival are greater. The CDC said that because of our amazing healthcare and quality of hospitals, and the readiness of healthcare provided the mortality rate in the U.S. would be less than 50%, even as low as thirty percent.

Now you may feel a little reassured knowing that the healthcare support here in America can heavily increase your chance of survival against nasty diseases but how would the disease spreading affect America. In 2001 the U.S. government simulated a bio terrorist attack on the United States. The name of this simulation was titled Operation “Dark Winter.” The endgame was to exploit any failures in national emergency responses such as border control, airport control, and transportation, food, water, and medicine as well as many other responses needing managed. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and other important bio defense departments headed the simulation. The test was designed so the disease would spread at an accelerated rate, one that America would have major issues maintaining, and what resulted shocked the CDC and other organizations. The rapid deployment and spread of the virus would have overloaded the national emergency response teams and major civilian casualties followed. The test showed and revealed major problems in America’s contingency plans for an outbreak of rapid spread.

In conclusion, the American healthcare support infrastructure is based on quality and results. A disease as deadly as Ebola, which has a 50% chance of killing you based on where you receive treatment, can be treated with the most recent technology and medicine as well as the best general care around that America has to offer. However the problems America was unaware of pre OP “Dark Winter”, if gone unchecked, could have affected our country in ways that would be damaging to us. Without Dark Winter past flu and other major epidemics could have gone another way. Swine flu may have been less deadly than believed to be, the way we studied the simulation allowed us to treat it faster and prevent further spread.

Here is a video showing explaining Dark Winter.