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Via Phil Ringnalda - SARSWatch.org.
Here's a nice quote for those who think that this isn't that big a deal:
Up to now, SARS has had a fatality rate of about 3.5 percent. If that sounds mild compared, say, to the virus that causes AIDS, consider this: The pandemic flu of 1918 killed "only" about 2.5 percent of those whom it infected. That amounted to 50 million people worldwide.
So, how's that cough?
[cloned from Diary Of A Madman]
2003-04-03 08:31 am UTC
Deleted comment
2003-04-03 08:43 am UTC
Or the West Coast.
2003-04-03 08:47 am UTC
"Santa Clara County has seven other suspected SARS cases, but only one person is hospitalized. The other people were isolated at their homes for 10 days, Smith said, adding there is no laboratory test to confirm the illness."
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/31/hk
"If isolation is effective to control the spread of the disease, we can say this decision came too late," he said. "And who can say for sure who should be isolated?"
Over the weekend, 58 of the 105 new SARS cases reported in Hong Kong were found in Block E of the Amoy Gardens complex.
Of the 213 people in the complex with SARS, 107 live in Block E, the World Health Organization said Monday.
Deleted comment
2003-04-03 09:03 am UTC
The disease has a low fatality rate, it's seemingly got a low degree of communicability, it has a moderate lifespan in terms of contraction to fatality, which limits its virulence (diseases that kill quickly like ebola are the least likely to spread very far, while diseases that kill slowly like tuberculosis are the most likely), and the number of deaths is still quite low.
It's something we should all pay attention to, and be sensible about. But it's not something we should freak out about.
2003-04-04 04:49 am UTC
The 1918 Pandemic...
actually was worse than instant mortality numbers would indicate. A great number of survivors of the 'flu epidemic came down with Parkinson's-like symptoms a few years later as a result of the virus. (See Oliver Sacks' book "Awakenings) My great-grandfather was one of them-- he survived the flu ok only to be completely infirm from Parkinson's about a dozen years later. He died 17 years after the epidemic, by which point he was so shaky, he required full-time nursing care. (IIRC, he was in his late 60's)