We interrupt this fabulous trip with a touch of the flu!  This is me sitting in a hotel room, not far from my Western (thank God) style toilet.  It sucks to be that girl, but thankful we didn’t have anything truly planned until the weekend.

I don’t normally dwell on the negatives, but with all the Ebola scare in the news, it made me start to think about how easily an epidemic can spread.  Let’s take my life for example.

On September 27, I was in Bridgeport, Texas (just outside of Dallas) with over 1000 people from 13 surrounding states.  While I didn’t have direct contact with all of them, I did personally handle items that were touched by at least 200 people, probably more.

From there, we went to Offroad Expo in Pomona, California.  62,000 people attended the expo.  Again, I didn’t have direct contact with all of them, but at least another 200 from several surrounding states.

Next stop, Seoul, Korea aboard an Asiana Air flight that held 400+ people.  From there to Osaka, Japan.  Within the next few days, we travelled by train within Osaka, by Shinkansen to Toyko, by train within Toyko.  Very crowded trains. In fact, we passed through the Shinjuku station no less than four times, Shinjuku has two Million travelers a day.  I realize that I am atypical of the general public, but what if there is an airborne disease that starts spreading before there are symptoms.  Can you imagine how many people could be infected?

I’m not a statistician, but if you took those numbers and extrapolated how many people could be affected over a three week period, it is astronomical.  No, I don’t have a life threatening disease, but just imagine if one of those who did was in my shoes right now.  Makes you think.