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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   643 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 10, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I'd chalk it down to post-COVID hypersensitivity. It's not like those years have faded from popular memory or discourse, and another scary-sounding viral outbreak can be reasonably expected to get many people going.

I'm not worrying about it. Less because I've done the kind of review that @Throwaway05 might have done (I know very little about HV beyond the high mortality rate and proven H2H and zoonotic transmission), and more because I'm tired boss.

Living through one global pandemic and then the overzealous measures around it was enough for me. Even if there's a new outbreak, until it gets much, much worse than Covid ever did, I'll still have to come into work. Perks of being an essential worker.

If we've got neo-Ebola-plus-plus, then I might seriously consider taking a career break and sitting indoors. Like, >2% CFRs for my reference class is my standard for "oh dear", and if it crosses 10%, I'm handing in my badge and going to the Winchester to wait for it blow over.

Otherwise, I'll start caring when we're talking >10k people infected, in multiple countries, in the span of a month or two. Caring isn't the same as doing anything in particular, that's just my personal threshold for sitting up and taking proper notice.

From my understanding (which is not based off of exhaustive review) the outbreak is effectively over (come laugh at me later if it is not).

People are sensitive because of the great trauma which....sure.

I can't imagine how much of a freakout the 2014 Ebola outbreak would have caused these days.

The Coming Plague, well before 2014 (early 90s?) certainly made it sound feasible. That was an interesting book. The girl I was seeing at the time (then yet-to-be-a-med-student, now a fairly reputable doctor) used to go on and on about it. I think pandemics or their possibility are what got her into medicine, though apparently she's not now an epidemiologist. Edit: Nevermind

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