I think the requestors don't want controllable. They want to trigger it and spread it throughout their 'hood.
Actually, the plague should be the opposite of what it is in the normal game.
With the "normal" diseases in the game, you have to micromanage the sim to make him die.
With the "new disease", the sim should die unless you micromanage it to survive.
Anyway, anything that brings some chaos to the neighborhood would be a good thing...