Читать книгу Epidemic Leadership - Larry McEvoy - Страница 18

Epidemics survive and flourish by co-opting the abundant resources of the natural system in which they live. While they may sprawl across wide territory, they are never burdened by long and complicated supply lines. Epidemics possess very little start-up capital; they “own” very little internal resource. Influenza doesn't get into your body with its own energy—it enters passively and then cranks up your vast energy-making capacity to fuel its own multiplication and impact. There are caveats and trade-offs to how epidemics co-opt our resources: the more invisible and mild the pathogen, the faster and wider it moves. Epidemics that don't ensure sufficient health of hosts—at least for a time—to allow for further contagion are scary and have a higher death rate, but they're not very successful. Epidemics that kill hosts too quickly and in high percentages compromise their own path to massive coverage of a population.