Elizabeth,
I too found the part about contingency interesting, especially considering how the proliferation of these pandemics is so largely dependent on chance. It seems like these intricate chains of contingency must cross at exactly the right moments with the right agents in order to potentially manifest into a pandemic. This also made me wonder about how many potentially devastating plagues we might have unknowingly nearly avoided simply because one step along the chain did not properly occur.
To address your question, I think you are right in the fact that it is virtually impossible to find the exact patient zero for a certain, new epidemic today, however, as our detection skills and scientific breadth of knowledge grows — as it has
I too found the part about contingency interesting, especially considering how the proliferation of these pandemics is so largely dependent on chance. It seems like these intricate chains of contingency must cross at exactly the right moments with the right agents in order to potentially manifest into a pandemic. This also made me wonder about how many potentially devastating plagues we might have unknowingly nearly avoided simply because one step along the chain did not properly occur.
To address your question, I think you are right in the fact that it is virtually impossible to find the exact patient zero for a certain, new epidemic today, however, as our detection skills and scientific breadth of knowledge grows — as it has