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'It is too soon to know how things will eventually work out, but the Hong Kong statistics are instructive. As of yesterday, Hong Kong had 970 cases. 800 were still in the hospital, some of whom will die. 142 had recovered, and 28 had died. I do not know the average length of a hospital stay, but based on the statistics it seems to be more than 2 weeks.'
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I have been reading similar statistics from reports in other cities affected by the disease. Aside from the concern over potential fatalities, most coverage of this seems to be missing the point that this disease brings HUGE numbers of extremely sick and highly contagious people to local hospitals for long stays and usually infects at least some medical caregivers, especially early on in the outbreak.

Look carefully at the numbers of those who have been and are still being hospitalized. A hospital with 200 beds is a good sized facility. In our country, most of our facilities are already being well used and filled with all other medical maladies. You can preserve a SARS death rate of 'only' 4% for as long as you have hospital beds and care available for those seriously affected in order to help them pull through.

Once medical resources in an area are overwhelmed and exhausted, not only would the death rate be expected to rise quickly from this disease, but people will not be able to receive the same care they do now for other urgent medical problems. During an outbreak in any given area, the high need for hospitalization which could fill all available beds, plus the risk of contamination and loss of medical personnel to the disease could create an across the board medical crisis.

Like everyone else, I'm trying to sort the fact from the fiction concerning this disease, but these seemingly undisputed facts concerning hospitalizations are disturbing to me.

Sorry - I just realized my post is off topic for this actual article which was concerning the possiblility that the disease is man-made, I just started putting my thoughts down concerning the hospitalization stats and got carried away.

...these seemingly undisputed facts concerning hospitalizations are disturbing to me.

Me too.

but these seemingly undisputed facts concerning hospitalizations are disturbing to me

And largley uncovered facts. Although, most are quick to "blame" the media for whipping this story into a frenzy, I would argue quite the opposite.

When, and it's not to often, I hear a report it is in a quick segment that portrays this as a problem in Asia with a low death rate.