How Quickly Could a Single Supervirus Spread to Every Single Person on Earth?
Germs on a Plane Air travel can rapidly spread viruses across continents. Treating patients before landing is critical. Getty Images If it's a particularly contagious virus, it would spread across the planet in a year. "If it starts in New York, it's going to be in London certainly within a week," says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle who uses computer models to analyze how viruses globe-trot. "And from there, it will quickly travel to the rest of North America and Europe." For Longini's computer forecasts to become reality, though, certain conditions would need to be met. First, it should be a strain of influenza. As anyone who has suffered through a bout of flu knows, it affects the respiratory tract, so sneezing and coughing make it easy to infect anyone within a three-foot radius. The virus must originate in a...