SARS Taking Over China

China finally admitted that with 300 people in the hospital, there are at least 400 more suspected cases. This is spreading like wildfire.

Toronto has 14 confirmed deaths and whole neighborhoods are quarantined.

Anybody have any personal,local experience with this virus?

Marty

About 53% of the population of Toronto lives in apartment buildings. I read that the disease may be spreading via sewage pipes and/or cockroaches. I lived in Toronto for more than 20 years and cockroaches are rampant in the apartment buildings. It would seem that the problem is worst in high population densities. Toronto has a large population of Chinese who've emigrated to Canada in the last 10 - 20 years from Hong Kong.

Given that there's still no cure for the common cold and this virus is similar, it's possible nothing can be done. It could decimate the world population assuming no breakthrough is discovered.

i wouldn't get in your bunker yet. it's overblown by the media as usual.

PhotonBoy

I don't think that health officials reacted fast enough. I never even heard of SARS before the last 2 weeks and it's already affected several continents and tourism around the world.

Marty

Well, the death rate is low compared to other illnesses. It's more a fear factor than anything else. The incubation period is said to be around 10 days so if we could quarantine the world for that period it would help.

The cat is out of the bag now... as the old song says: "Que sera, sera... whatever will be, will be."

Just to put this in perspective, the common flu kills between 20 and 30 thousand people a year over the entire world. There are regular outbreaks of much more deadly flu virus, the most famous in 1918 which killed between 20 and 40 million people over the whole world. Then again in 1957 which killed 70 thousand people just in America and again in 1968 which killed 34 thousand Americans.

But what we really need to learn about SARS is how deadly it really is. In America each year 25 to 50 MILLION of us actually get sick, but it only manages to kill 20 thousand. This is still horrible, but I haven't heard that they have been able to track SARS infections that don't hospitalize people very well yet.

So we live with this kind of stuff all the time. You may want to avoid certain high risk stuff while this is getting sorted out, but you don't have to panic, it's business as usual.

You can go out and get a flu shot, which can help a lot, but there is no guarantee that is going to be against the current worst strain.

james, wouldn't most of those deaths be from people that aren't healthy. like elderly, etc..

The (Singapore) Straits Times

"'We tend to see that those aged 40 and above have not been able to cope as well as younger people,' she added.

But there is yet no explanation for how some young and healthy people are dying from the disease, while some elderly people with medical problems are able to pull through, she conceded.

Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang, pointing to figures, said the chances of recovery were high for those who sought early treatment.

'It is not such a frightening disease, as 90 per cent do recover,' he added."

lol take that with a pinch of salt, just yesterday s'pore's vegetable wholesale market got close down for 10 days cos some one there had sars. things doesn't seem to be settling down instead new cases are poping out. lots of things are hush hush
and one of the first few deaths was a perfectly healthy pastor and another is a young doctor /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

a friend of mine who attended a talk by a doctor who recovered from sars said that till today though he has fully recovered from sars, his feces still has the sar virus

tkl, thats generally true. Part of the problem why this is going to continue to get worse is that there is a rapidly growing population of people in the world with compromised immune systems.

The flu strikes worst the very young and the old or sick. (just cause your elderly doesn't necessarily mean you're sick /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Until recently SARS has followed this same tack. The last set of documents from the regular CDC briefing about it suggest that in one place it is starting to infect more otherwise healthy people. They are looking into the possibility that it may have mutated into an even more virulent strain, but the more likely assumption at this point seems to be that there is some massive concentration of it in that apartment complex. Perhaps it spreads like legionaries in the AC evaporator or something they don't know yet.

This new "epidimic" has been blown out of proportion. It's receiving a lot of attention because there's very little treatment directly for it, except for the usual treatments with the flu. But as far as generating as widespread a deathrate or creating a high infection/fatality rate, it's not even close to what it's being billed as.

Of course, the one glaring thing about SARS is that the entire world caught wind of the virus quite quickly, and China has finally taken steps to hold itself accountable for the slow reporting, treatment, and acknowledgment of the disease. Fear can strike quite a large flame in the media nowadays.