SARS infects 'protected' medical staff Gloves, gowns, masks didn't stop outbreak at Sunnybrook

CanWest News Service - The Ottawa Citizen - canada.com ^ | April 20, 2003 | David Rider

[Judith Anne]

I have not heard that Tamiflu is effective at all. Ribavirin (sp) is the one I've heard mentioned, with steroids.

[Domestic Church]

You might be better off investing in a horse and buggy!

[Domestic Church]

"I know all this sounds crazy. But what do you do?"

Tell them your child has a bad cough?

[CathyRyan]

I was thinking a course in flint tool making. LOL

[Domestic Church]

Is that a tamoxin related drug? The drug they were testing breast cancer patients with?(pardon my spelling.)

[Domestic Church]

"Ribavirin (sp) is the one I've heard mentioned, with steroids."

But the army researches said it didn't work...so maybe it's the prednisone that's helping.

[CathyRyan]

You could invite them over to meet the your kids new friends that just moved from HK and that more of their family is moving when the kid's parents get settled. Everytime they say something say great the new cousins just arrived.

[Domestic Church]

Check out Lehman's non-electric catalogue, lol!

[riri]

I was out doing some spring planting so my husband doesn't divorce me and I was, naturally, thinking about this. My gut feeling, and that is all it is gut feeling, is that we are looking at an immune system destroyer. I have thought this all along, especially since the early days when Mother Abigail so much as theorized.

Now, when I read they are treating patients with protease inhibitors, I am really alarmed.

I would be interested in knowing if the survivors have low T cell counts and if they are suffering from the tell tale yeast infections that HIV-AIDS brings on.

Again, this is just my gut feeling.

[riri]

You could invite them over to meet the your kids new friends that just moved from HK

I must just live among really clueless people, because that would not even register an alarm bell with any of the people I come across. They still think the biggest danger that is facing them is biking without a helmet..

[CathyRyan]

U.S.: Time to re-look 'un-American' idea

'Quarantine' is a loaded word with metaphorical implications that many of us in America have fortunately forgotten.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/singapore/story/0,4386,184384,00.html

[CathyRyan]

Sounds like the type you can drive away by offering to take their kids to the gun club and teach them how to shot.

[Cvengr]

I was speaking with an engineer a week ago regarding a secondary wastewater treatment process and the safe use of the effluent for non-potable water supplies for desert irrigation. The only problem was that virus (viri?) wouldn't always get killed in the process.

This weekend is being billed as an international gay friendly event in Palm Springs encouraging gays or all types to attend many festivities including the local water park. Our concern was HIV being spread by the water in the giant pools. Chlorine would probably kill off most germs, but even if the water was drained, the next treatment would be a secondary treatment system which wouldn't kill all virus before the nonpotable effluent would be used to irrigate the many public golf courses in the area.

One position would be to have all attendees pay for disposal of the pool water as a bio hazardous waste, but many believe that would be too extreme.

On the other hand, playing golf in Tyvex is just a bit too cramping. Go figure.

[SauronOfMordor]

On another thread, researchers reported the virus can survive on surfaces for over 24 hours

[friendly]

"With a 5%+ mortality rate, I have called it "The Stand Lite."" The numbers aren't in yet - this is just the front of the curve but Canada is at 9.5% and climbing.

And there is substantial pulmonary and neurological disablity among many of the survivors.

[Domestic Church]

Yeah, the survivors have a good chance at being mad as hatters or disabled like an elderly asthmatic with emphysema. That's not much to rebuild a culture with...and it certainly leaves a decimated nation ripe for the picking.

[friendly]

Nguyen Thi Men, the only health worker at the centre of Vietnam's SARS outbreak to fall severely ill and survive reports:

(Quotes from a BBC Report) More and more people got infected and had to be hospitalised. The staffing was scarce as most of us were sick. Then my situation started getting worse at an amazing speed. Breathing was difficult and I had to be under a respirator for about 10 days. I was unconscious most of the time.

Now, looking back, everyone says I am lucky because I had been one of the worst cases. I guess I am, as some of my colleagues have already died.

The luckiest thing is that none of my family got anything from me.

My husband, my kids - they are all healthy now. I have been back with them for more than 10 days.

My lungs haven't got back to normal and I still feel tight in the chest. But I suffer from a bad insomnia; most nights I can only sleep for a couple hours.

My muscles are so weak I can hardly lift anything, and my eyes are swollen and red.

But the thing that disturbs me most is my right leg. I can't walk, can't even move the leg without feeling an excruciating pain in my joints. I used to be very active, very physical and I did a lot of exercise.

I'm training to walk with the help of a physiotherapist and I do it every morning until midday.

[realpatriot]

"Yeah, the survivors have a good chance at being mad as hatters or disabled like an elderly asthmatic with emphysema. That's not much to rebuild a culture with...and it certainly leaves a decimated nation ripe for the picking."

The death rate in the U.S. is 0%, Canada 9.5, worldwide 4.5?

Are these figures correct?

If so, what are the implications?

[Domestic Church]

CDC downgraded our cases to 35 back on Friday...so 0% death rate is still reasonable given our number of cases and the quality of medical care available... and of these 35 I would imagine some eventually will die. I also think we will have some US clusters occurring in the next week or so thanks to recent conferences and events in Canada(but at least we know for instance that 90 Americans were at a conference(out of 450 total) where someone was incubating SARS. And at least we know where some of the religious group that was exposed are in our borders. As long as we can keep track of those exposed and get their cooperation before they expose others and before they develope symptoms we have a good chance of containing this batch of clusters. I suspect 9.5% is more accurate than 4.5% and even per loin's spread sheets have indicated that 4.5 is the low end.

Too early for real implications but we can suppose.

The problems I see will come when the clusters are occurring faster than we can manage and before we have any information. Can you imagine if the cases in Canada were hidden like the ones in China? Who knows if we have some about to surface that we don't expect? It is highly likely that will happen soon.

It already has been shown that 9 passengers contracted this from one person on an airplane flight. Look at how these international flights continue on to different cities as a normal matter of business. There has been no routine decontamination of these flights at any point, nevermind at each point. No one is even talking about this but it is necessary. It's like the ER situation...that is the frontline for infection but no one is changing routines to prevent infection. There still isn't a standard NG95 mask on every ER employee, at least hanging on the neck waiting for the department signal from the entrance dest/triage area(which would have to always have it on.) This has to become a routine, a given part of an ER uniform. We have to give our medical staff the best equipement we can just as we gave our soldiers the best.

Here's hoping these and many other new protocols and routines will be instigated very soon. And here's hoping that needed products that are primarily imported are emphasized for manufacturing here as we cannot allow trade agreements written before this crisis/biowar limit and hurt us when those nations we have traded with are obviously unable to safely trade under these circumstances

[DB]

I would assume larger particulate matter from coughs and sneezes or just general splatter that go air born. That's the same reason for covering the eyes.

An effective mask against an error born virus is probably much more like a gas mask.