Disease Burdens More Than Just the Patient

Often, when we talk about infectious diseases and outbreaks, the focus tends to be on those who got sick: the symptoms they experienced, how likely they might have been to infect others and so forth. We may talk about whether or not they were vaccinated, what complications they may have suffered and the costs that they bore through lost work/school days or how much treatment cost. Only occasionally do people think about the effects of an infection or outbreak on the government. After all, infections only have a direct impact on the person who has the disease and maybe those around them, right? How could a disease have any significant impact on a government. They're big, faceless things that just kind of exist in the background, except when there's a problem or it's election season.

The fact of the matter is, outbreaks of infectious disease actually have quite an impact on governments, particularly local ones. As just one example, I recently received the following from an anonymous reader: