That's the thing about Outbreak – for all its silliness, it's genuinely chilling.
In 1892, Hamburg, a major port, lied about its cholera outbreak for fear of hurting commerce, just as China did this year.
Cholera has killed more than 1,500 people and infected nearly 40,000 in Nigeria in the country's worst outbreak for nearly two decades, the UN has warned.
The C.D.C. delayed publishing a scientific report of the outbreak for 13 years, saying it did not want to aid in creating copycat episodes.
Although South African officials, who have known about the outbreak for a year, promised a prompt and full investigation, even experts there acknowledge that efforts are lagging.
The delays meant Sarah Kirchner of Belle Plaine, Minn., whose two young children became ill from the outbreak, for weeks had no idea how to prevent a recurrence.
Government officials hid the outbreak for four months, even concealing patients at closed military hospitals, before the disease spread to Hong Kong and then around the world.
During the current outbreak, for example, a woman infected with Ebola was "rescued" from a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, by panicked relatives convinced that she was being held for nefarious purposes.
OF DISPUTATION about the application of what epidemiologists call the "tipping point --the point --theich an ordinary and stable point --the-a low-level flu outbreak, for exampointcat turn into a public-health crisis.
The diagnosis of inhalation anthrax in a New York hospital worker throws into question many of the assumptions about an outbreak for which the scientific and medical wisdom was already being revised daily, sometimes hourly.
"But it is important to get answers if we can - if not for this outbreak, for future outbreaks.
