What does the worldwide epidemic look like?

Answer 1

All things start small. Epidemics are no different. The first infected individual will come into contact with a newly mutated pathogen, or possibly, a completely unknown pathogen. That individual becomes infected. The method of transmission is going to determine what happens next, but generally there are two varieties of pandemics.

The first is going to be fast. The pathogen will probably be spread through the air, physical contact, or both. The disease spreads rapidly (depending on virulence) and it takes some time for the world organizations to get ahold of the situation. Depending on the lethaality of the pathogen, it's virulence, and whether or not it becomes a global pandemic mass hysteria will ensue, egged on by the 24 hour media cycle. People will scramble for medical supplies, food, water, ammunition, firearms, somewhat orderly at first, and then depending on the situation society, may begin to deteriorate in localized areas as organizations ability to respond to the situation become overwhelmed with the tasks at hand. Looting may become widespread as supplies dwindle. Curfues are put in place and governments begin to quarentine the areas where the infection is. The quarentines simply forces the infection to burn itself out. Effectivly infecting every possible host before either everyone is sick, or, only people with genetic immunity are still uninfected. Hollywood LOVES this one because it's scary and sells tickets.

The second is much slower. A great example would be the HIV pandemic. It's quiet, people aren't violently ill until close to death and they can be infected for extremely long periods of time without visible symptoms. Obviously HIV can only be acquired by swapping bodily fluids, usually sexually or through intravenous drug use but if some new pathogen were able to spread quickly while simultaneously taking years to show visible effects? We might all be infected before we realized it.