![]() ![]() ![]() At the moment that cholera overcame the man, the rest of us were crammed inside a sweltering hall between the gate and the airplane, preparing to board. Such was the fate of a passenger ahead of me in line for Spirit Air Flight 952, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the summer of 2013. Without the benefit of modern medicine rapidly administered, you’d be faced with a fifty–fifty chance of survival. It would only be after you’d shuffled down the plane’s aisles and found your lightly tattered upholstered seat that the stranger within would make itself known, in a deadly, explosive onslaught of excretion, and your trip overseas would be suddenly and cruelly curtailed. Even as the killer silently brewed in your gut, you’d push your bags through security, perhaps even pick up a croissant at the coffee shop and enjoy a brief respite in a cool molded-plastic chair at the gate before a crackly PA announced the boarding of your flight. You’d feel perfectly well enough to withstand the long queues there. ![]() ![]() You could drive over dusty, potholed roads to the airport. That’s why, even after being infected, you could, say, eat a decent breakfast at your hotel, of sunny-side-up eggs and tepid juice. Then half a day passes, and cholera has drained his or her body of its fluids, leaving a withered blue corpse. The newly infected person feels fine at first. There’s no drawn-out sequence of progressive debility. ![]()
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