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This disease has the dual character of blessing and curse. It is a curse for obvious reasons, having killed and destroyed livelihoods. But it is as gentle as possible an introduction, if that word can be applied to a fatal disease, to the threat of emerging diseases and bioterrorism. Experts have been predicting for years that a disease or manmade pathogen was going to sweep the world: and here it is. It is a storm petrel, not the storm itself.

In retrospect, many of the Homeland Defense measures which seemed so outlandish just a few months ago, are already being exceeded by countries like Singapore and Hong Kong. Pre-flight screening, increased border checks and the like, now seem wholly inadquate against this spreading menace. Thousands of people have been mandatorily quarantined in Singapore for simply being in a vegetable market which a disease carrier visited. They are monitored at home with web cams and electronic bracelets. And still the disease spreads apace.

School has been closed in Hong Kong for weeks now. Employees have been told to stay out of high-rise office buildings. There are disposable plastic holders for doorknobs. Elevator buttons are disinefected by the hour. Canada has installed thermal screeners at airports to detect passengers running a temperature. Had any of these measures been suggested, even in jest, by John Ashcroft, he would have been pilloried. And yet they are not enough.

Technologies being developed against bioterrorism will find a new market. In particular, sensors which can detect viral loads in public places, to find the "edge of the pathogen cloud" are going to be in demand. In the short term, people are being asked to work from home. Network engineers and software developers will find a huge new market. Hong Kong has been forced to increase it's ICU units tenfold, and there are worries it is not enough. The medical profession will need more personnel.

SARS is the gentle edge of a horrible cleaver, the full force of which the world has not yet felt.

In particular, your last paragraph, which I have just finished re-reading.

"Technologies being developed against bioterrorism will find a new market. In particular, sensors which can detect viral loads in public places, to find the "edge of the pathogen cloud" are going to be in demand. In the short term, people are being asked to work from home. Network engineers and software developers will find a huge new market. Hong Kong has been forced to increase it's ICU units tenfold, and there are worries it is not enough. The medical profession will need more personnel."

Good luck getting more personnel...we're underpaid and don't get any respect as it is, though that's improving a little...but unless somebody is planning to try to force nurses to work against their will (particularly those with little children at home) there will just not be the number of health care workers needed, during a potential US outbreak.