Ah, yeah, the 1918 Spanish Flu was bad. But not 18th Century yellow fever or Ebola (potentially) bad (in the US). Using your figure of 675,000 dead, that's a

Ah, yeah, the 1918 Spanish Flu was bad. But not 18th Century yellow fever or Ebola (potentially) bad (in the US). Using your figure of 675,000 dead, that's a fatality rate for the whole population of 0.6-0.7%, based on the 1920 and 1910 Census figures. Just now looking at Wikipedia, it's estimated that 28% of the population got it, so that would make a US Case Fatality Rate of 2.6% ... bad, but not hardly as bad as much of the rest of the world. It was fantastic transmissible, plus its killing young healthy people is part of what made it so bad, a lot of older folk at least in the US appear to have had some immunity. However WWI wartime censorship kept a lid on greater recognition of how bad it was (it got its name because reporting on neutral Spain was allowed). So I don't put it in the same league, and the late '50's Asian flu killed "only" around 69,800 Americans (per Wikipedia), so ... well, how many of us expect Ebola to kill that many in the country? I expect/hope sanity will prevail, that the Politically Correct will be shouted down or hounded out of office/their positions, and once we revert to the old fashioned quarantine methods the death toll will be small. But plenty will label that process as "panic" ... and if it doesn't happen, well, we may indeed see something close to well justified "panic".