Hey, Chicken Little, try three months, not three weeks. It’s only been in the headlines for a few weeks, but people have been catching it for a while now. Part of the reason it took so long to gain recognition was China’s attempt to try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
I think it does – I just got an e-mail from Travelocity’s Fare Watcher, with a quote of $590 (!) from Raleigh-Durham to Bangkok. Sadly, I’m not in a position to take advantage of this at the moment, but if you have an opportunity, go for it!
And meanwhile, my parents, who are semi-retired and can go wherever they like, have jettisoned their plans to visit Spain and Portugal because of the war. Instead they took a brief trip to Florida and are now safely at home in … Northern Virginia. I don’t think I want to analyze the logic involved here.
I am in the thick of SARS, so maybe I shall say something.
Till now, the actual nature of SARS is fuzzy. We can’t be sure whether it is airborne - there are some medical experts who said it might be. The virus has an active lifespan of three hours outside the body - during that time it could transmit by touch or close contact, or by touching ‘infected objects’.
In Hong Kong and other concrete jungle with pockets of high population density, the virus could spread easily if left unchecked. After all, people who ‘import’ SARS in their home country have just been doing ordinary things like shopping, eating, touring etc. Yet they still got it.
If one is infected with SARS, it impact the life of his/her friends, family members, his/her work-place or schools of education and others.
So far there has been no vaccine effective against it. Medicine doesn’t seem to work well. People with other type of diseases would be in big troubles if they have SARS. People with SARS could only try to survive it.
Imagine being in thick of it. You won’t know if the person coughing next to you, while being squeezed back to back in subway, has SARS or not.
Thanks to much ‘drilling’, people with fever are urged to see a doctor immediately. Imagine if people are not cautious about it - SARS could be a bigger danger.
This is not to say that over-reacting and irrational decisions are justified because of SARS. But please, don’t dismiss it lightly either. Human beings, after all, are creatures of emotions and sometimes too prone to irrational thoughts. I have spent sleepless nights worrying about friends who suddenly came down with flu or for myself when I started to feel unwell. Every single cough echoes concerns and worry. Every moment of a headache seems to be an omen of impending doom.
I wishes this crap will be over soon too.
IMHO, SARS seems to ‘pretty harmless’ not because it so but because of the extraordinary control measures undertaken by the various governments,
I have some doubts of your risk assessment myself.
Considering that Hong Kong has a population density ranging from 27,000 people/km^2 to 50,000 people/mk^2 (total area of the island vs some of the older segments of the city) and has less than 1,000 people infected since NOVEMBER (when the SARS outbreak is believed to have started). In around 152 days not even 1000 people infected? And this is when there was no efforts to isolate or quarintine people until 130 or so days into the outbreak.
If one of the most densely populated cities in the world isn’t having an explosive outbreak, then in all honesty what are the odds that you’ll randomly contract SARS without sharing needles, unprotected sex and DYI organ transplants with an infected person.
Yes there are a lot of warning and voluntary quarintines being issued. I mean, the various health organs of various nation states want this contained. You don’t exactly want someone shedding virus swimming in the local resevior now do you?
If you’re worried about SARS you’re probably scared shitless about DRTB, the Ebola outbreak going on now, Necrotic bacteria, DR-Staph, West Nile (the season is starting soon!), RotaVirus (one of the leading causes of childhood death), Shagellia (that is the bacteria that causes the trots with the ED50 around 2 bacterium right?), IL-6 recominbate Smallpox is a good one (more lethal and 100% resistant to the small pox vaccine), B virus (100% lethal, no suggested treatments), MDR HIV-2, Denube, Yellow Fever, nonbacterial pneumonia, flu, drug resistant siphilis, and you know I could go on and on and on and on listing all of the easy to transmit pathogens all high a higher infection rate and than SARS.
I’m getting really REALLY fucking tired of answering all sorts of idiotic questions about this.
I spent 4 FUCKING hours on the phone last night talking to my grandmother who thought this was a CHEMICAL WEAPON. I blame reporters with fewer braincells than testicles.
Weeeeeellllllll…
In Toronto, there are about 15 new cases diagnosed every day for the past week. Granted, that’s not a huge percentage of the population of Toronto, but the first case was about 3 weeks ago.
That seems quite speedy, particularly now that SARS has shown up in Vancouver, where the spread is gaining speed, ala TO, and now there have been 3 cases in Calgary (since 2 days ago) and 7 in Alberta.
Is this a plague that’s gonna wipe out the entire earth’s population? Well, no. But it still sounds like it sux to have and I don’t think taking precautions makes you a weeny - particularly not if you work in a Toronto hospital.
I’m a doctor now! Great!
Listen folks. If you are a doctor in a hospital that has had SARS patients your risk is much greater than if you are landing at a Hong Kong airport. Why people are more worried (seems to me almost panicked) about SARS but have absolutely no problems with resistant Streptococcus pneumonia is beyond me.
Well it’s not beyond me, actually. There are no hourly reports of the rise and infection rates of resistant pneumonia-- a much more fatal and prevalent disease in Hong Kong. Nobody cancelled flights, nobody walked around with surgical masks.
Like I said before, if you feel it is neccessary to protect yourself from a disease you are not likely to get, but ignore or don’t care about the diseases that that are killing tens of thousands-- then you have a problem with risk assessment.
The Doctor has spoken.
The canada situation is REALLY interesting. It’s spreading much faster there than everywhere else it seems.
I’d be curious to find out why.
Well CRorex here is an interesting article I found on line about why the Canadian death rate is higher.
Further:
So, suffice it to say, not only is it spreading rather quickly here in Canada, a larger percentage of people are dying from it. Canada is not really what most would consider a third world country. Heck, I believe a couple of years ago (a few years ago) we were rated as the #1 country to live in as far as quality of life.
Sooo - a bunch of people becoming infected with and dying from some sort of pneumonia is rather alarming.
Hey, patronising fuck. 2223 cases in 12 weeks is still pretty fucking scary if you ask me.
I love the way you combine SARS with Osama’s attitude. I’m sure there’s a connection. [insert appropriate smiley face]
Hey, isn’t New Mexico the place where mouse droppings are lethal?
You guys are driving me crazy. It is not 2223 cases in 12 weeks. It was 2223 cases since they started keeping record of SARS. Let’s take a look at other infectious diseases.
Here’s a report on getting infections in hospitals across the US.
That’s 22500 people dead 12 weeks[sup]*[/sup] in the US alone (that’s providing my math is correct. Never a good bet).
Do you think it’s risky being an inpatient? Most people don’t. Yet you do not see everyone and their grandmother cancelling elective surgery, do you?
In Japan, before SARS the TB infection rate is 38.1 cases per 100,000 per year. That’s 11,185 people per 12 weeks[sup]*[/sup] coming down with tuberculosis in Japan in the same time 2223 people developed SARS worldwide.
The numbers being slung around here that are supposed to be so alarming (2223 cases in the last 12 weeks---- in the whole entire freakin’ world!!!) do not strike fear in my heart. And they really, really shouldn’t alarm everyone as much as they are doing. If I was a hospital worker in Canada, my alert system would be tinging. If I was a hospital worker in Hong Kong I may be demanding WHO to give me a briefing.
But wait a minute! That’s exactly what’s happening!
The thing that’s killing me here is that the media is giving good numbers. But they are not providing them in any kind of context most people can understand. Most people could understand the significance of these numbers— Hell, I understand the significance of these numbers and I’m a math illiterate. Just give it 2 seconds worth of thought instead of feeding into the frenzy.
[sup]*[/sup] My math skills are so poor that I enlisted the help of my math wiz daughter. Although all she did was verify that my numbers were correct, I feel the need to give some credit where credit is due.
PS. Do not confuse the pro-- rah, rah spirit of the OP with how anyone should view the actual threat. Just understand the numbers that are being thrown at you and calculate the real risks here.
Whatever. Have fun in your bubble, moron. The rest of us have living to do.