Replies

From your link http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hssars203245372apr20,0,7629675.story?coll=ny-health-headlines "Liao said that the plumbing construction in Amoy Gardens acted as an amplifier, spreading the virus through sections that shared plumbing with the one occupied by the kidney patient's brother. Investigators figured out that the toilet drain pipes from each bathroom went to large vertical pipes, or stacks. Separate pipes, feeding into the same stacks, were supposed to carry away water that had dripped onto the floors or shower of the bathrooms. Developers put a U bend in the floor drain pipe, intending it to hold enough water to form a block against a backflow. But the U pipes were usually dry, because apartment residents used water frugally. So vapors from the waste stack could flow backward, carrying contaminated droplets into bathrooms.

This explanation provided little solace, because such plumbing configurations are common in this city. Residents' associations demanded this weekend that authorities check their plumbing. Yesterday, Liao, an environmental scientist, posed for the media, studying the pipes and sewer systems of two buildings next to Amoy, offering praise for recent plumbing alterations made by building managers."

The article also also identifies the mechanism for spreading the disease initially in hospitals as nebulizers. I do not know if any of this is truth or merely a working theory.

The punch line of the article is that there really aren't super spreaders, there are conditions that lead to more rapid spread.

What this article does not address is what appears to me to be a high incidence of SARS infection in travelers versus the general polulation residing in Hong Kong. Residual viral loads in hotel rooms? Bugs lurking / actively spread through airplane cabin pressurization systems? Close contact for 1 to 16 hours at a stretch with infected passengers [also obviously linked to planes]? Suseptability due to the irregular schedules involved in almost all travel?

Any theories? Do you believe that what I interpret as a higher risk to travelers reflects reality or is it merely proportionaly higher reporting of antecdotes?