Epidemics?

[lismooty]

So I've been following CNN for the past couple of days, and today brought discussions of disease, with the mayor of New Orleans and the cnn.com saying dead bodies in the water pose a threat. This article acknowledges that although the water is nasty, it's not the corpses that are really the issue

Comments

[bpjohnson]

I'm no epidemiologist, but I watch one on TV. I could be entirely wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that with both Typhus and Cholera, you can have the disease and not know it either because it isn't presenting with symptoms or because you think it's something else.

Ah yes, looks like the WHO agrees. Even after recovery from typhoid or paratyphoid, a small number of individuals (called carriers) continue to carry the bacteria. These people can be a source of infection for others. source And: Most persons infected with V. cholerae do not become ill, although the bacterium is present in their faeces for 7-14 days. source

So I can imagine a scenario where someone who didn't know that they were sick, and who works aboard a ship that stops somewhere there has been a recent outbreak could've gotten stuck in NOLA, what with it being a big port city and all. Say that person got shut in... oh say a stadium with 15k other people and no running water... no a/c so it's nice and tropical... I can see that disease spreading like syphilis in a