Doesn’t everyone infected carry the same disease if it has spread?
In: 1
It really isn’t, that’s just a movie thing. It dates back to a news reporter that referred to the first case of a particular disease as patient O (for outsider or out of Towner) because they believed that a particular local outbreak came to town with this one tourist. It became a sensationalized news story, and soon Hollywood was using the hunt for patient 0 as a plot device.
It can be useful for infectious disease specialists to talk to the original patient in a local outbreak, because they can get a list of potentially infected people or find out where the patient got the disease from. It’s not really mission critical though, just a good opportunity for some more info
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