SARS Outbreak 2002-2004

Factual Questions
1

Why didn’t SARS spread around the world and cause a pandemic like COVID-19 has? China got hit the worst, but there were only 27 cases in the US and no deaths, and after a two-year run it died out. Did it have a different means of human transfer? Were they able to contain it faster/better? Or was is just less virulent?

2

As I understand it, the big difference is that SARS was not contagious until symptoms were apparent, so those who were infected could be isolated and spread kept to a minimum.

3

I lived in China throughout SARS and this is what I remember.

  1. Was generally contagious during the fever stage
  2. At the beginning, took several places by surprise because medical staff didn’t understand how infectious it could be (HK, Tianjin, Toronto). Toronto’s first case infected the EMT, ambulance crew and the ER.
  3. At the beginning, the vectors of infection were not understood. Typical virus spread as well as thru human waste. Hong Kong had a housing estate opposite a high rise construction site. The construction workers were urinating, and wind spread droplets near by to the housing estate, which had dozens of outbreaks and was quarantined. At the time, there were huge fears SARs was spread somehow through water pipes or building ventilation, but it turned out to be the construction site
  4. SARS had “super shedders”. A handful of people that were really virulent before they died a day or two later. One guy in the Tianjin airport infected hundred(s) of people just walking thru the airport. Another in the Hong Kong Metropole (?) Hotel infected dozens just checking in and going to his room. And the aforementioned initial Toronto case.
  5. IIRC SARS victims were sick and not walking around for a few days before feeling out of sorts.

Practically every airport in Asia has temperature screening of all passengers since then. As well as hand washing, and very common public hand disinfectant dispensers.

The US dodged the SARS bullet. Combined with having to go back to the 1950s and polio epidemics to find people that had lived thru terrifying epidemics across society, which certainly didn’t help our Covid response.

4

Thanks. Ignorance fought. They are related, but very different viruses…