On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 14:22:25 -0700 (PDT), Thomas RUX <xxxxxx@comcast.net>
My original question, however, was more on the macro level: how do _worlds_
or _interstellar polities_ handle the spread of disease? What happens when
a particular virus or virus family goes pandemic or endemic on a particular
world? Especially, what happens if the asymptomatic-but-infectious period
is a week or longer?
How do you see the 3I?
Early presentations made it clear-ish that the 3I is concerned with:
a) Trade between planets
b) Borders of the Imperium
c) Criminal or Military actions that threaten A or B
For stuff on planets, that was the business of the planet (Fusion Guns, sure you can carry them! TL-15, law level 0!)
Now that might seem like a stupid system where public health is concerned, but the flavour was always worlds that were in the 3I but were largely independent if you didn't screw up trade or start a revolution or violate a few key rules the Imperium cared about (nukes, WMDs, etc).
With that sort of view of the 3I, any Imperium response would be geared around preserving trade, preserving borders, and staying out of planet's business. What would that look like? Would it work?
Some planets have no starport and some planets can't even begin to stop small ships from landing wherever they want. Probably a TL-15 free trader with some guns can smoke a local TL-7 airforce. Or just sneak in - sensors at TL-7 aren't the best.
We frequently model Travellers just doing as they do in Star Wars - hoping out of their ships without any inward clearance, decontam, etc.
So, a player group could have a carrier, visit a whole pile of planets, staying a few days at each to fuel and recargo, then jump out. If they stay ahead of the news, they may never know that their ship should be renamed 'The Typhoid Mary'.
I suspect the Imperial Ports use a lot of screening and decontam and most inward clearances must involve medicals by the ship's medic which get overseen by the customs authorities and they can probably demand quarantine or a secondary check by a local doctor. Same outbound. It's not fun or zippy, but it seems likely necessary.
Maybe the higher TL places have developed highly effective broad spectrum protections (probably developed for IISS explorers first) that can boost human immune systems enough to make most local bugs irrelevant. Maybe all spacers have to have nanites or at least vaccinations with this before they get to cruise around haphazardly.
The Imperium may well maintain military pandemic units that can be dropped into a system experiencing an outbreak and offer to help the local government help keep it contained.
If the Imperium's processes, whatever they are, can limit transmission to a single planet, trade is not threatened much. I am sure that would be their main policy and they'd resource it enough to be effective.