That's entirely true. Because towns were small and rural, they were isolated. This self-limited the spread of a disease.

One of the issues with any pandemic is communication. If the communication lines are diminished in any capacity, then there would be limited ways of knowing the spread.

One of the concerns in that area is INTERNIC. They do IP forwarding of the actual name of the website versus the URL name. So, if INTERNIC wanted to restrict site traffic, they'd go down, and then only those who knew the IP address of someplace like GLP could communicate. It would be one way of lessening web traffic and restricting the flow of citizen journalists.

One person in the medical community who's been very forthcoming is Dr.Grattan Woodson MD. He was a freguent contributer at flutrackers, and always gave good information about the pathology of influenza subtypes as well as medical response. I think if we had a pandemic, he'd be very vocal.