When they discuss the number of people who died from SARS I don’t see anything which relates to the age and sex of the dead. Has anyone seen anything that would explain if this illness is killing people with immune deficencies, the elderly, and infants? Or, is this illness just killing people randomly according to their ability to fight it off? Is it true that if the war was not going on right now that SARS would be the top news story around the world?
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/faq.htm
Lots of good info at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/
Insider is asking about mortality, Ducks. http://www.cambridge-reporter.com/topstory_03040263938.html
I can talk about the Ontario experience. In general, the people doing badly are elderly or immunosuppressed (e.g. one of the cases is a liver transplant). Young, healthy people tend to do pretty well. That said, a few of deaths involve healthy children and healthy adults.
According to Health Canada SARS webpage [accessed 3 Apr 2003] at <http://www.sars.gc.ca.>: There have been 62 probable cases of SARS reported in Canada with 6 deaths and “All 6 deaths reported to date have been associated with individuals with underlying illness and all but one occurred in elderly patients.”
While this is true, I am also talking about patients who are intubated, and “doing badly” according to the hospital Chiefs of Staff (with whom we teleconference daily).