It’s just the fucking flu people. THE FLU!
It’s gonna make you sick with the sniffles, and your bones and muscles will ache. And you’ll have a fever.
But you know what? It’s not going to kill you unless you’re already feeble – and then really, you’re already at the point where a butterfly flapping its wings too hard in the next room will cause enough of a fucking draft to give you pneumonia and kill you.
STOP! BEING! STUPID!
While I agree with your general feelings that this is blown out of proportion, healthy people can die from SARS (from what I have read).
6 to 15% of the contacts with butterflys are fatal?
well, I agree it’s overblown in the media,but it is not just the flu.
First, we don’t know anything (nor will we ever know) about susceptibility. Can you say Person A didn’t catch SARS because they weren’t susceptible or because they were never exposed? However, according to the WHO, as of April 24th, there were 4,439 reported SARS cases and 263 deaths, or 5.92%.
So your 6-15% of contacts are fatal is a bit overblown.
Really?
from thissite.
It’s not JUST the flu, but it’s not far off from there. THe only noticeable difference between the two is pneumonia.
Healthy people don’t die from SARS in America, at least.
Sam
The catch, I think, is that medical personnel were falling ill (at least in Canada)… and that there’s no vaccination available against it, unlike Influenza. When the docs and nurses start getting sick, people freak out because these people ARE SUPPOSED to be able to fix everything, n’ now they’re being isolated and quarantined and… aaaaah!
It’s blown freakin’ out of proportion here in Canada, that much I can tell you. Everyone entering health facilities in Ontario are screened for SARS. Chinatown here in Ottawa (where there are no cases) is dead empty.
Right now what bothers ME with the numbers is that more than half are “suspected” cases. How many cases of typical pneumonia are being labelled as suspected cases of SARS?
Anyway - people are freaking out. I understand the concerns, though, and the importance of stopping this while we can… but still.
Urgh.
And there’s the problem. I’m talking SARS and you’re talking West Nile.
My apologies
It was ridiculous for the Aneheim pitcher, a professional athlete in his 20’s, to suggest cancelling the game with Toronto because of the scare but for our grandparents, AIDS patients, etc it is a very valid concern.
If you’re healthy, and you take reasonable precautions, and take reasonable care should you become infected, you’re not going to be killed by SARS or West Nile.
You’re only gonna die if you let yourself get sick and sick and sick and do stupid shit like go travelling when you should be in bed at home drinking fluids.
I remember Appier (the pitcher in question) playing for the Kansas City Royals back in 1991. Appier is around 38, not in his 20s.
and he’s on the DL right now anyways
And if we didn’t have this whole Iraq thing, the media would really be all over this.
Listen, kids, I’m in a serodiscordant relationship. Every little bug I bring home has the potential to make my partner very, very sick. Every time I feel something coming on - even the sniffles - I have to tell him right away, so he can take prophylactic treatment (if he can). So something like this is just a little bit scary. OK? He’s already had PCP and other OIs. SARS is just too new and too fucked up. Just because someone looks “young and healthy” doesn’t mean they are. :mad:
There is a logic flaw in your numbers. 5.92% of the people who (are believed to) have contracted SARS have died. Of the 4,176 who have not yet died, not all have recovered. So some more will die. And the rate will go up. The only way to know the fatality rate is to know total cases, total fatalities AND total recoveries. An article in the New Scientist puts the fatality rate somewhere between 8% and 15% (the rate has varied by country). This includes healthy people. The lowest reported rate has been in China, where it’s believed that some of the SARS patients were really affected by normal pneumonias and so were able to be cured by antibiotics, which would have the effect of understating SARS mortality rates.
So this is a very scary disease, although it’s not yet a pandemic and the media has blown things out of proportions. The good news, for now, is that the health organizations are taking this very seriously and the infection rate does not seem to be as high as some other more common maladies. Let’s hope that remains the case and the good people fighting this thing can keep it under control or better yet, make it go away.
Over the last couple nights, MSNBC has had interviews with at least two health care workers, otherwise healthy and not frail/careless people, who came down with SARS and were in extremely poor conditions as a result. One woman reported calling her husband from her isolation ward a couple times because she really thought that was it, that she was about to die.
The point is, we know comparatively very little about this disease right now. I hope what you’re saying turns out to be true, but you cannot assume that only frail/careless people die from this illness yet, as there is no concrete proof of that. There was a good GQ thread on this in the last few days that discusses why we shouldn’t pooh-pooh SARS as being just “the flu”, and lists a number of victims who were in their 40s or so and otherwise healthy.
I think wearing masks everywhere is pretty silly, as is fearing to go to Toronto, but just saying it’s like the flu isn’t really known to be correct yet.
(IANAD, but I do work in a hospital, and have to take infectious diseases into consideration since I work with patients with AIDS.)