Zombie Research Society
You already know the story of Typhoid Mary; an infamous Irish-American cook responsible for infecting more than fifty people with typhoid fever. During the twentieth century this deadly bacterial infection seemed to follow her across New York, from job to job. Between 1900 and 1906, eight different households had contracted typhoid fever during her brief employment.
But it wasn’t until a sanitation engineer, named George Soper, managed to track the deadly outbreaks back to Mary Mallon that things really got interesting. You see, Mary was what we now call an “asymptomatic carrier” which means that she showed no signs or symptoms of the disease responsible for the outbreaks. So naturally, she rejected his diagnoses outright!
Who can blame her, really? Imagine the zombie virus had just begun to infect the world, and someone comes knocking on your door claiming that you’re patient zero; even though you look and feel just fine! Well, according to George Soper himself, Mary Mallon didn’t take kindly to the accusation and dashed from her home, leading detectives on a dramatic chase.
She came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor. I made another effort to talk to her sensibly and asked her again to let me have the specimens, but it was of no use. By that time she was convinced that the law was wantonly persecuting her, when she had done nothing wrong. She knew she had never had typhoid fever; she was maniacal in her integrity. There was nothing I could do but take her with us. The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and I literally sat on her all the way to the hospital; it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.
Health officials referred to sections of the Greater New York Charter to justify their actions, which clearly state they had the authority to remove “any person sick with any contagious, pestilential or infectious disease”. Of course, at that time no one really understood the idea of asymptomatic carriers. But even to this day the tale of Typhoid Mary is somehow viewed as a questionable moral dilemma. In 1996, author Ann K. Finkbeiner was still asking if her story represented a threat to individual liberty – or a necessary sacrifice to the public health.
While the evidence and additional outbreaks surrounding Mary Mallon almost five years later suggest that she was, in fact, responsible for many cases of typhoid; the epidemiology is only one aspect of interest to zombie researchers. How would asymptomatic carriers react during the inevitable zombie apocalypse? Is forcible detention and vaccination acceptable or moral?
And what about the incubation period of the zombie virus? Is it possible there are already asymptomatic carriers among us; and how would you react if health officials, police officers, and an ambulance came to haul you away? Eventually Mary Mallon was apprehended, taken forcibly against her will, and typhoid bacilli was indeed found in many of her stool samples.
Most zombie films and television shows simply skirt this issue. Rather than portraying some undetectable disease carried by otherwise healthy survivors, the undead virus is often shown as immediate or inevitable after death. However, there are a number of infectious diseases today that continue to spread virtually undetected thanks to people like Typhoid Mary. We can only hope the zombie virus isn’t one of them. After all, what you don’t know can eat you!