http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/15/health/15SPRE.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5062&en=8b4805194f6aa740&ex=1050984000&partner=GOOGLE How One Person Can Fuel an Epidemic
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. and LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
A child in China so infectious that he is nicknamed "the poison emperor." A Chinese doctor who infects 12 fellow guests in his Hong Kong hotel, who then fly to Singapore, Vietnam and Canada. An elderly Canadian woman who infects three generations of her family.
Watching as the mysterious illness called severe acute respiratory syndrome hopped around the world and exploded in new outbreaks, epidemiologists began to ask themselves an unsettling question: is it carried by "superspreaders"?
The notion that some people are hyperinfective, spewing
germs out like teakettles while others simmer quietly like stew pots, has been around for at least a century, ever since Typhoid Mary became notorious in 1907 [Page 6].
For some diseases, including tuberculosis, smallpox and staphylococcus infections, superspreaders definitely exist.........
Thankfully, most people are NOT superspreaders. 'Course, if they were, we'd be calling this one Captain Trips..