An advanced society dealing with a pandemic?

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That would require a society with virtually zero privacy, and a very focused, powerful, and somewhat draconian government. Certainly possible, but it would come with other setting effects that should be taken into account, IMO.

Sure. The OP's "no cure" means, to me, that those magic-like panimmunity or medical nanotech stuff you find in GURPS higher tech sourcebooks don't work, otherwise they'd be considered as a "cure".
No quarantine also seemed to be a requirement.
Come to think of it, you could have a Surrogates' world, too.

[Anthony]

A lot of this depends on other features of the disease, and how much it has spread before being detected. The basic way you deal with a limited outbreak of a disease is

1. Seal the area; no-one can enter without protection, no-one can exit without being tested or quarantined.
2. Move the people out and test them for disease (if you can). Anyone you cannot reliably determine is clean must be quarantined, there isn't an alternative to that.
3. Clean the area. How difficult this is depends on the properties of the disease. Most diseases will be solved by scrubbing, letting it dry out, and waiting for a while, but highly soiled objects are often solved by dumping them in an incinerator, and hypothetical super-diseases could require even more extreme options.

Ultra-tech might have superior options for testing, and might have viable options for mobile quarantine (i.e. instead of being limited to a single location, you're required to wear a containment suit of some sort until you can be cleared).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

[*]Move the people out and test them for disease (if you can). Anyone you cannot reliably determine is clean must be quarantined, there isn't an alternative to that.

I still say vaporizing them is a workable alternative if your politics and/or resurrection technologies allow it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I still say vaporizing them is a workable alternative if your politics and/or resurrection technologies allow it.

Valid. You can also just seal them in and let the disease run its course.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Valid. You can also just seal them in and let the disease run its course.

That is effectively what a quarantine is - having a different word just causes people to think of it differently.

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I still say vaporizing them is a workable alternative if your politics and/or resurrection technologies allow it.

The Star Trek Transporter has medical usages the show never dwelled on.

Transporter the bugs over there and the person over here. All done.

Don't dwell on the philosophical difficulties 'disintegrate and recombine' transporters cause...

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

The Star Trek Transporter has medical usages the show never dwelled on.

Transporter the bugs over there and the person over here. All done.

Don't dwell on the philosophical difficulties 'disintegrate and recombine' transporters cause...

Sure. Any technology that causes you to pass through a stage of being a manipulatable stream of data lets you cure (or change in some other way) anything you understand well enough.

Star Trek transporters are actually pretty inconsistent between episodes how much they do that. But the upload, then download into fresh bodies scheme I proposed upthread uses essentially this same approach.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Sure. Any technology that causes you to pass through a stage of being a manipulatable stream of data lets you cure (or change in some other way) anything you understand well enough.

Star Trek transporters are actually pretty inconsistent between episodes how much they do that. But the upload, then download into fresh bodies scheme I proposed upthread uses essentially this same approach.

Of course, any tech capable of doing that sort of thing should be unimpressed by any mundane disease, so given the claim of no cure, presumably the society's tech is less advanced than that. Unless by the time you're detecting the disease it's already done the damage that will kill you, and it's in an area that can't be fixed (something that attacks the brain, for example; ultratech toxoplasma gondii or some such).