[AngPur]

Well it sounds ridiculous unless you think back to the Spanish Flu panic of 1919. The flu 'runs out of steam' whenever a deadly strain infects a population. Only a certain percentage of people are mortally affected by it (and usually it kills the young and strong as much as the old and enfeebled). After enough people who can be that badly affected die, they statistically cannot spread it to one another anymore. The outbreak burns itself out, with exponential numbers of infected, but a sudden cease in the mortalities from the disease. Very much unlike, say, Bubonic Plague, which has a very high mortality rate.

In Social Darwinist terms, flu outbreaks are nature’s way of still having natural selection work on mankind in a non-racial, non-class bound way.

Of course, to the rest of us who have hearts and understand that people are people, and they deserve any chance you can give them at life, the situation of a fast-spreading, fast-killing disease like some forms of influenza are a real Katrina/Terror attack level threat. Every measure should be taken to secure the public under such an event. Now, even though he may not be the ideal candidate, Bush's position makes him the right person to use martial law to enforce such a quarantine. God forbid.