Doesn’t everyone infected carry the same disease if it has spread?
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>Doesn’t everyone infected carry the same disease if it has spread?
Not exactly. The way diseases spread is by multiplying in the host and then being dispersed into the environment by the host (my sneezing, coughing, pooping, etc.).
Every time an organism makes a copy of itself (bacteria) or is copied by the host cell (viruses) there’s a chance of mutations that change how virulent (how sick it makes the host) and infectious (how easily it is transmitted) it is. It’s random, but those changes affect how quickly it spreads, so mutations will start to dominate if, for example, they make the bug more infectious.
Finding “patient zero” means understanding how the disease became an outbreak/epidemic and gives information about how it spreads. For example, in South Africa a cluster of early covid infections were traced to a Dutch tourist who visited a bunch of wine farms. And for the most recent outbreak of Ebola, they found that “patient zero” had carried a latent infection from the previous outbreak that suddenly transitioned to an active one.
Understanding where these diseases come from helps us to make better plans to do something about them.
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