Exclusive SARS Report: Six Degrees of SARS: Of Politics, Greed, and Plagues

Toogood Reports ^ | 11 April 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[Victoria Delsoul]

On the same day, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D), announced that there was no danger in visiting Chinatown. Many Chinatown businesses have been in trouble since before 911, when the Transit Authority shut down its main East Side subway station, at Grand Street, for renovations. The station may not reopen for years. That silly, silly man surely told himself that he was just helping his constituents.

LOL, he can't help it. He is a Democrat.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Chlamydia is a bacterium.

[HiTech RedNeck]

What I'm curious about, is how India is faring.

[Domestic Church]

Haven't even seen India mentioned. I guess no *reported* cases.(Or they have their heads in the sand on this.)

http://www.who.int/csr/sarsarchive/2003_04_10/en/

[mrustow]

Two quick fixes:

1. SARS kills regardless of age. The old are not disproportionately affected. In fact, the retired are underrepresented among critical and fatal cases. This indicates that people might be well served by taking adequate rest at the onset of symptoms.

I've seen the claim re the elderly attributed to "experts" in many articles, so I think the writer was merely repeating it. Apparently, a lot of "experts" have been spreading old wives' tales. (Surprise, suprise.) I guess instead of examining the facts, they simply repeated the same old saw they always use.

2. Chlamydia is a bacterium, not a virus.

I'm glad you corrected the writer. Now, can you explain how one group of scientists can insist that SARS derives from a coronavirus, while others insist that it comes from a chlamydia bacteria? And pardon my ignorance, but is it at all possible for a bacteria to interact with a virus?

[mrustow]

On the same day, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D), announced that there was no danger in visiting Chinatown. Many Chinatown businesses have been in trouble since before 911, when the Transit Authority shut down its main East Side subway station, at Grand Street, for renovations. The station may not reopen for years. That silly, silly man surely told himself that he was just helping his constituents.

LOL, he can't help it. He is a Democrat.

I guess, in cases like Schumer's, it's as simple as that.

[Victoria Delsoul]

There is no question he is a simpleton.

[Domestic Church]

"And pardon my ignorance, but is it at all possible for a bacteria to interact with a virus?"

I think that has been seen in plant viruses and to a degree in animal viruses but I don't think it has happened with human before ever. I could easily be wrong and have been before;)

[mrustow]

Thanks.

[mrustow]

There is no question he is a simpleton.

Well, since he's certifiable Ha-vud case (as Harry used to say), and I just attended public universities, I'm sure the senior senator and man of the people from New York wouldn't consider it it my place to weigh in on his intelligence.

[MrConfettiMan]

Just catching up with all my pings. Very good article, mrustow. Thanks.

[mrustow]

Sure thing, Mr. ConfettiMan.

[boris]

"Tried-and-true public health methods required tracing each patient's contacts; quarantining affected individuals, buildings, and neighborhoods; placing patients in isolation"

This method would also end the problem of AIDS if it were applied.

--Boris

[Petronski]

AIDS was called GRID for two or three years before they determined one need not be gay to acquire the disease.

[mrustow]

I believe the writer alludes to that, by the way.

[mrustow]

AIDS was called GRID for two or three years before they determined one need not be gay to acquire the disease.

True. You could be a heterosexual woman whose lover was secretly bisexual, as thousands of black and Hispanic women have found out the hard way.

[Petronski]

I was thinking of all the hemophiliacs who contracted the disease in a completely morally neutral manner. Also, AIDS babies.

[FrogMom]

I've been watching this SARS thing since it was first reported.

Out of curiosity, I ran some numbers using 1918-1919 Spanish Flu (SF) numbers as a sort of baseline.

There are 6B people in the world.

20% of the worlds population got the SF.

Yes, this could be extremely low because of two facts, today's rapid transportation, and in HK, in some places you look at number of contacts and number of cases (WHO's numbers) and infection is running in the 90's percentile-wise. But 20% is a start.

That would mean that 1.2 B people would get it.

Mortality rate is running somewhere around 4.5%.

Yes, that's low because as soon as the medical facilities are overwhelmed that will soar. I wish we could get some real numbers out of China, it would give us a much better idea.

So, as a conservative estimate, 540,000,000 people would die. 540 million.

Food for thought. The less conservative numbers are, of course, even more mind-boggling.

[mrustow]

I was thinking of all the hemophiliacs who contracted the disease in a completely morally neutral manner. Also, AIDS babies.

I wasn't aware of hemophiliacs, but I was aware of heterosexuals who were infected via transfusions of tainted blood. It seems a lot of promiscuous homosexuals were also professional blood donors. Mrs. (Joy?) Reiser and Arthur Ashe come to mind. But the disease was still passed on in those cases by gay men.

[mrustow]

I've been watching this SARS thing since it was first reported.

Out of curiosity, I ran some numbers using 1918-1919 Spanish Flu (SF) numbers as a sort of baseline.

There are 6B people in the world.

20% of the worlds population got the SF.

Yes, this could be extremely low because of two facts, today's rapid transportation, and in HK, in some places you look at number of contacts and number of cases (WHO's numbers) and infection is running in the 90's percentile-wise. But 20% is a start.

That would mean that 1.2 B people would get it.

Mortality rate is running somewhere around 4.5%.

Yes, that's low because as soon as the medical facilities are overwhelmed that will soar. I wish we could get some real numbers out of China, it would give us a much better idea.

So, as a conservative estimate, 540,000,000 people would die. 540 million.

Food for thought. The less conservative numbers are, of course, even more mind-boggling.

What I'm reading from scientists these days, is that the mortality rate is more like 10-20%. It seems that the media is deriving the mortality rate by dividing the SARS deaths by the number of total diagnosed cases + the number of deaaths. The scientists I've corresponded with say that the true mortality rate is deaths divided by released SARS patients plus SARS deaths. The media is publishing an artificially low death rate by improperly counting pending cases as non-mortal.

The media have also repeatedly claimed, as does the writer of this article, that SARS deaths are usually the old or those who were already sick, and thus immuno-compromised. However, recent deaths have increasingly been youngish people who were healthy, prior to contracting SARS. Hence, there is nothing hysterical about your comparing SARS to the Spanish influenza pandemic.