The SARS Hoopla

Gopusa.com ^ | April 14, 2003 | Carol Devine-Molin

[Dog Gone]

I don't know what to make of that. If potting soil is deadly, most of us would be dead by now. Maybe that's a very isolated situation. I assume and certainly hope so.

We can't live ordinary lives while walking around in surgical masks being constantly afraid of breathing in some pathogen. If we were that fragile, we'd be extinct long before now.

But, since we're all going to die someday, it does make you wonder what it is that will finally get you.

[RAWGUY]

4% fataility is not a "hoopla."

4% fatality means that a family of 5 has a 18% chance that one of the members will die.

4% fatality means that a residential block with 70 people on it has a 94% chance that at least one person will die.

The only question is how contagious it is. I can't seem to find a straight answer to that.

5 posted on 04/14/2003 5:58 PM PDT by TheLooseThread

WRONG!...The worst pandemic of the 20th century was the 1917/18 Spanish flu. It infected about 2 Billion people world wide and took the lives of over 30 million people between the ages of 20 and 40 years.

This flu caused the worst pandemic recorded to this date and this takes into account he "Black Plague" pandemic. Just a note here if you please: The 1918 pandemic had a 1.5% fatality rate. Now you do the math and tell me how and why a 4% fatality rate is nothing to worry about if you please.

If the same number of people are exposed and contract the disease, (2 billion people), at the rate of 4% fatalities there will be 80 million deaths and this will most certainly be a record for the world as we know it so get prepared.

GOD Bless,

RAWGUY

[InShanghai]

...Dr. Plummer is still skeptical that the new coronavirus is the answer. His lab has studied over 2,000 specimens and has found the coronavirus in less than 50 per cent of specimens from SARS patients.

In our data, the association between coronavirus and this disease seems to be getting weaker, rather than stronger," he said.

Taken from: British Columbia lab first to unlock suspected SARS virus

I think there is a lot of information missing, which leads to a lot of speculation. That leaves plenty of room for us armchair doctors, and the media, to guess. IMO, this virus/pathogen could be out of control already and we are only seeing the controlled, hospitalized cases.

The symptoms could be different (milder, no fever, and without pneumonia) for each case or group of cases. There could be many more people with SARS and we would never know it.

The symptoms are used to sort the cases. Therefore the only SARS virus/pathogen carriers we'll see are the ones exhibiting the extreme distress caused by the virus/pathogen. If this is the case, then maybe the numbers rank up there with influenza instead of a killer epidemic.

Once again, it makes me question the motives of the World Health Organization (a branch of the now defunct UN).

[Doctor Stochastic]

MCCCLII

[tornado100]

Of course a 3-5% fatality rate is tragic! But media sensationalism is involved in the ongoing SARS stories, too. It can be both tragic, and given to media sensationalism.

[_Jim]

For those wishing to decode the good Doctor's semi-cryptic answer:

PDF]Roman Numeral Translation Table 1 to 2,105 (PDF file)

or

Conversion from arabic numerals to roman 1 - 1449

[Ditter]

You may be onto something with the cayenne pepper. My father had the idea that a tablespoon of hot sauce taken at the beginning of a cold would knock it out. He talked me into trying it once when I was a teenager. I wish I could remember whether or not it worked.

[hove]

I hope Carol Devine-Molin got demoted for writing such a pointless, weak article.

[hove]

" It can be both tragic, and given to media sensationalism."

Yeah! Enough stories on this unimportant SARS stuff. We want more war coverage!!!

[steve86]

Link to post about 3M Corporate Advisories...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/893236/posts?page=4#4

[tiki]

I think that it is not only the death toll that is a concern. It seems to me that most people have to have medical intervention. How many respirators does your local hospital have? 10? 20? That isn't very many and it sounds like a vast amount of the ill need such intervention to live through it.