Jump in SARS Deaths; Airline Fears for Future (HK reports sharp jump in SARS deaths yesterday)

Reuters/Yahoo ^ | Sunday April 13 2003

[Petronski]

1:00 PM Edt
Channel 26 TNT Sunday, April 13

Outbreak
150 min.

Dustin Hoffman stars as an Army virologist in this 1995 thriller, which is so well-acted and breathlessly paced that it rises above its implausible script.

Hoffman and a team of scientists (Rene Russo, Kevin Spacey, Cuba Gooding Jr.) are desperately trying to contain the spread of a killer virus. The epidemic has decimated a small California town, and the scientists realize that they cannot find a cure until they locate the source of the disease---an infected African monkey. But first they must get past a military officer (Donald Sutherland) whose solution is to incinerate the town and everyone in it. Wolfgang Petersen directed. Ford: Morgan Freeman.

[Lessismore]

In the US the death rate for flu is around 13 deaths per 100,000 people annually. Note that this is per "people", not per flu sickness.

[JustAnAmerican]

I haven't seen mention of it anywhere, but hopefully we are not allowing any plane/boat from that area of the world to enter the US. And if we are, the idiots that are doing so need a wake up call.

[FrogMom]

The world-wide death rate is 7%.

That isn't too bad. What is the world wide death rate of the flu?

The pandemic in 1919 killed 21,642,274 people world-wide. Mortality rate was 2.5%.

Makes 7% look a little scarier, huh?

[Dog Gone]

The mortality rate is less than smallpox, but it's still extremely high. Some people don't get sick enough with the disease to require hospitalization, but a significant portion do, and many of them require intensive care.

If we're lucky, this illness will spread slowly, because we certainly do not have enough hospital beds, and certainly not in the intensive care units, to handle millions of cases.

[Lessismore]

from http://www.hkupasteur.hku.hk/hkuip/SARS.html

"As on April 12th it cannot be told whether the disease is spreading in a linear or in an exponential fashion. The increase in the recent days is a matter of great concern, since it suggests exponential growth. If the total number of cases reached 5,000 by the end of the month, this would suggest that the disease may have come out of control. Mathematicians at the Department of HKU are investigating the possibility that the disease would result from mutations derived from a rather innocuous highly contagious disease (with oral-faecal transmission route) that would have changed its tropism by mutation. This has already been observed in livestock in the past few years, with coronaviruses in particular."

[Monty22]

One more death nail in the airline industry as a whole. Eventually we'll have to get used to living local, driving, or telecomuting as the planes will be gone. I don't fly, and am looking forward to increased alernatives to travel.

[Lessismore]

From "SARS batters Asian Economies"

Mr Brice says one of the major impacts is going to be on productivity, because people are much more conscious of how they work with other people, especially if someone coughs or sneezes.

In a human version of the computer back-up measures against the dreaded "Y2K" bug before January 1, 2000, companies are splitting up key teams and insulating them to minimise the chances of unchecked SARS contamination.

It looks like firms are activating their "Disaster Recovery" plans and going to split operations.