Good article. I just wonder if we could order a successful quarantining in this country, and ask millions of people to get out with disenfectants and other cleaning agents and help out.

SARS FACTS

Suspect case: A person who develops high fever (greater than 38 C / 100.4 F) and respiratory symptoms such as cough, breathing difficulty or shortness of breath, within 10 days of

1) having had close contact with a person who is a suspect or probable case of SARS.
or
2) having traveled to or resided in an affected area.

Probable case: A suspect case with chest X-ray findings of pneumonia or respiratory distress syndrome.

I keep wondering if is something that escaped out of one of china's military bio-labs.

HK SARS deaths reach new high

Um...............given that this is the first modern science has seen of this disease, it's pretty safe to say that every individual death brings the the total to a "new high"

Sloppy.

HK SARS deaths reach new high

Well - they *certainly* weren't going to reverse!!!

What matters is the trend week to week ...

I keep wondering if is something that escaped out of one of china's military bio-labs.

How many permutations on a virus do you suppose MOTHER NATURE comes up with on her own out there in the 'backwoods' of China where man, animal, chicken, pig, etc, exist in *close* proximity under less than ideal sanitary conditions?

I keep wondering if is something that escaped out of one of china's military bio-labs.

A bunch of others are wondering that also. The Chinese government has been under strong critisism for trying to hide SARS patients, even to the ridiculous length of driving dozens around in ambulances while WHO officials were inspecting the hospitals. That attempted coverup is very suspicious as regarding a possible Chinese bio-leak, but on the other hand, communist regimes are infamous for trying to cover up disasters, and a naturally arising epidemic might be another example of trying to make everything look nice.

That attempted coverup is very suspicious as regarding a possible Chinese bio-leak

I forgot - we live in a disease-free world ...

I understand what you're saying, and history is replete with pandemics that spring up all at once. China has an a LONG history of periodic epidemics that have in some ancient accounts, killed 50% of the population at that time. The Black Death originated in Asia and destroyed an estimated 30% of Europe. It took Europe about 100 years to get back to their pre-plague populations. And that was all dear old mother nature.

"Yup - looks like exponential growth in the number of probable cases alright - we're doomed."

The Black Death originated in

VERY few diseases have reached the 'panic' level in our press as quickly as SARS has - yet there are diseases that have killed as many people (although over a little longer time period) even relatively recently - - even the plague is still with us -

- from:

The World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER)

17 April 2003, Vol78, 16 (pp129-136)

Human plague in 2000 and 2001

The total number of human plague cases reported to WHO in 2000 by 11 countries was 2513, of which 232 were fatal.

In 2001, 12 countries reported 2671 cases including 175 deaths.

These figures are comparable with the annual average figures (2821 cases, 198 deaths) for the previous 10 years (1990ñ1999), when 28 207 plague cases with 1978 deaths were reported from 24 countries. During this past decade, 80.3% of cases and 83.9% of deaths were reported from Africa.

In 2000 and 2001, global case-fatality rates (CFRs) were 9.2% and 6.6% respectively, as compared with 8.5% in 1998 and 8.1% in 1999, and an average of 7.0% per year in the previous decade (1990ñ1999).

Also, there's a excellent book, "Plaugues and Peoples", by William H. McNeill that is a fine read if you are in a gloomy mood and wish to feel worse. :)

He chronicals plagues throughout recorded history, and the list from China alone is amazing.

Whoops, that's PLAGUES, not plaugues.

Does he go into the 'sanitary practices' - or lack thereof - by any of those peoples?

Click here, and scroll down a little to the "Look inside this book" pages.

Thanks.

Has the peak passed already?

How does a histogram constructed from a data set that excludes >85% of the total possible cases reveal JACK?!?!

Know what? It doesn't...

Has the peak passed already?

It seems to have - for Hong Kong and even Guangdong province ...

Know what? It doesn't...

SURE it can be and is meaningful - IF a random selection are 'culled' from the group - or a process excludes a certain random (BASED on no criteria which otherwise skew the result) part of the population from consideration in the first place.

It's called 'sampling' and it's done all the time in a multitude of fields from semiconductors testing to medicine ...