[pops88]

Yikes. (Please don't flame me, this is my first ever article post.)

[VoteHarryBrowne2000]

Good post, it is quite a sober topic. The point that is made about overwhelming ERs is true. There will not be enough ventilators to go around either, if this bug ever gets legs and becomes wide spread.

[formercalifornian]

Scary!

[David Isaac]

One would hope that this disease will be taken as seriously as AIDS was. Maybe people can even be quaranteened, if it can be proven that no minority, gender, or sexual preference toes would be trod upon by doing so.

I would have never known this was your first post.

[EternalHope]

Thanks for posting this article.

I am not a doctor, but I was fortunate enough to see some of the early material from Dr. Buckley. To say this thing is "just the latest version of the flu" or some such related nonsense is clearly uninformed.

It is certainly a very serious disease, but actual facts are a lot harder to come by than most people think.

Incredible as it may seem, there is STILL no firm consensus on what causes SARS. China, today, publicly claimed it is related to chlamydia. The United States, today, said it is 99% certain it is caused by a new virus from the corona virus family. Other candidates have been advanced in the past as well.

Nor is there a generally accepted and readily available test to confirm a case. The diagnosis of SARS is based on a fairly common set of symptoms, not a laboratory test. Hence, actual statistics on how many people have this disease, how many have recovered, etc., are based on underlying data that cannot be confirmed.

The United States, for example, reports cases of "possible" SARS. It is almost certain that this overstates the number of cases. Here in Washington state we have 7 reported cases of "possible SARS", but the public health authorities are already saying they may reclassify all of them as something else.

The world is very, very early in this course of this disease. We do not even know if it is airborn or not. We do not know why some people seem to be super infectors and others are not. We do not know the death rate, or how many people will require intensive care. We do not how many people will have such mild cases that they never even know they had SARS in the first place.

We have possible natural allies as well. It could burn itself out. We could successfully contain it. It could prove seasonal, giving us a naturally occurring breather in which to prepare a better response to the next outbreak.

There is no reason to panic, but we should certainly be doing our best to keep it isolated and unable to spread. With luck, we will contain this new virus so well that all the folks running around accusing the WHO and the CDC of "chicken little" behavior will be able to say, "See, I told you so."

[Countyline]

""Politicians will not take the tough decisions. When they do it will be too late. If this comes to you (and I sincerely hope it does not) it will potentially overwhelm your critical care services."

Tom Buckley was so right to get the word out from the first. It is too soon to know if it is waning. Serious stuff. Hemmoraging of the lungs and no specific treatment is of concern to us all.