At the time the virus had not yet been isolated
identify the carriers of the disease by mandatory testing of at-risk communities
That would have been a
really neat trick - identifying carriers by testing for an as-yet unidentified infectious agent.
In normal circumstances, the minimal public health response to an impending epidemic would have been to identify the carriers of the disease by mandatory testing of at-risk communities, closing off "hot zones" of the epidemic
I'm fascinated by the this. Are there any examples of this ever being done for any disease in the US? I'm sceptical of the claim about 'normal circumstances' and 'minimal public health response'.
I can't think of anything in my lifetime in the UK except for animal diseases like foot and mouth a few years ago and H5N1 bird flu currently - certainly nothing in the human population.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after