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Thanks for all your input on this thread. It makes for quite an information resource.

I am not a doctor, but I do understand statistical analysis. Hong Kong is most appropriately studied with the Amoy Gardens victims separated out. Because of the small size of the data base at the time of the outbreak at that apartment complex, the inclusion of these victims significantly skews the data. Leaving this data in causes an initial overstatement of the underlying growth rate, followed by an understatement.

Amoy Gardens serves primarily to show the explosive growth potential of SARS in an uncontrolled environment.

The United States is too big to be considered a single point of infection. Apparently we do not have a significant "hot spot" at this time, and are dealing with a collection of individuals who have traveled to Asia and gotten sick. They may or may not have SARS, but we are choosing to err on the side of caution and classifying them as "possible" cases. I would consider any trend analysis of this data to be very suspect.

China would be the ideal source for statistical info, but their data is highly suspect. We know they have been lying about this in the past, and strongly suspect they still are.

Even if they decided to provide reliable data, we do not even have confirmation that the disease they were/are fighting was/is the same thing. They are 80% sure the disease they were fighting in February was a variant of chlamydia (a weird type of bacteria), whereas the rest of the world thinks the disease it is fighting today is a new viral variant from the coronavirus family. If we assume China is moderately competent, then something is wrong here.

To sum up: It looks to me that statistical analysis at this time is premature for places like the U.S. (not enough localized data), and invalid for Hong Kong unless Amoy Gardens is considered separately. Singapore, Toronto, and Hanoi look promising, but it is too soon to declare victory.

China is potentially the mother lode of data, but we know they are lying.