[Trust but Verify]

Oh, for crying out loud. Fuzzy math, internet conspiracy theories. What passes for journalism in some cases these days is pathetic.

"The sky is falling!"

"The sky is falling!"

"Everybody to get from streets!"

[harpseal]

SARS exists that is a fact. We do not know exacty how dangerous it is. We are politically unwilling to institute quarantines. We shall see exactly how dangerous it really is. In the interim I will ignore panics or pollyannas. From what I have read it is transmitted by airborne contact. The virus can live 24hrs outside the host.

[Democratic_Machiavelli]

The CDC's number makes more sense to me, unless they're inserting cases not admitted to hospitals.

[LurkedLongEnough]

The article is sensationalistic, no doubt. Similarly, the movie "Outbreak" was laughably so. But I'm thinking that the surprise of the September 11 attacks should have been regarded as sensational, but didn't seem so.

What's the difference? Real, deadly disaster on American soil. There is so much that health authorities still don't know about this outbreak, I'll reserve final judgment for later.

[MattAMiller]

We still don't know exactly how dangerous this thing is. But the WHO has no interest downplaying it, any enormous threat would only mean more money for the WHO. I suspect they're hypeing it.

[pepsi_junkie]

Dividing the number of deaths by the number of cured patients results in a death rate percentage of 16% or even higher. In Canada, the adjusted rate has been computed to be about 25%.

This guy is no mathematician. You divide the umber dead by the TOTAL NUMBER OF CASES, not by the number of survivors. Doing it the way he suggests would lead you to believe that if 100 people get a disease and 10 die, the 10 deaths divided by 90 survivors = 11.1%. Clearly inflated abore the real 10% rate.

[Stentor]

I guess the Aids scam is no longer full employment enough for microbiologists. Those inscrutable mutating viruses. Hmmm.

[Snowy]

When someone in the US dies from SARS, then I'll think about worrying.

[savedbygrace]

Douglas must have been too busy to take the remedial math course his college offered him, what with all the parties and other cool stuff he had to do.

[1Old Pro]

Clifton Park, NY is near the capital, Albany New York.

 

Mystery illness extends its reach

Clifton Park-- Easter visitor becomes county's first suspected SARS case

By CLAIRE HUGHES, Staff writer
First published: Thursday, April 24, 2003

A woman visiting family in Clifton Park has Saratoga County's first suspected case of severe acute respiratory syndrome, bringing the total number of Capital Region cases of the flu-like illness to four.

County health officials won't disclose the woman's residence, due to confidentiality rules, but said she had traveled through Toronto to arrive here Friday to visit with family for Easter. She has agreed to remain in her relatives' home -- under voluntary quarantine -- until more is known about her condition.

Health officials became aware of the case Tuesday after the woman went to a medical clinic seeking treatment, said Terry Stortz, Saratoga County Public Health prevention team supervisor. She had started to feel ill Sunday, Stortz said. On Wednesday, the state listed the patient as one of 17 suspected SARS cases being monitored throughout New York.

Because the laboratory test to confirm SARS is new and time-consuming, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta tracks cases of the disease that are suspected. Symptoms of SARS include a fever over 100.4, headache, muscle stiffness and loss of appetite. To be classified as a suspected case of SARS, a person also must have traveled to a region where SARS has spread throughout the community. Toronto is one of those locations.

None of the woman's four Clifton Park relatives in the house with her have symptoms of the disease, Stortz said. They have been given tips for staying well, including monitoring their symptoms and washing their hands frequently. Unless they develop symptoms of the illness, however, they will not be asked to stay home, Stortz said.

Health workers who treated the patient should remain well if they used common precautions for not spreading the disease, such as washing their hands well. The disease is believed to be spread only through close contact with a SARS patient, including exposure to body fluids like phlegm.

The illness, whose cause was recently determined to be a coronavirus, has spread through 27 countries since November. More than 4,000 people have developed the infection, which has killed 251 people, according to the World Health Organization. There are 39 suspected cases in the United States.

State and federal health officials have listed three other area patients -- two in Rensselaer County and one in Schenectady County -- as having suspected cases of SARS. All had traveled to China, where SARS originated and thousands of people have been infected. All have recovered, health officials said. No one they were in contact with has shown symptoms of the disease.

The Schenectady County case involved a businessman who never developed the most-severe pneumonia-like symptoms of the disease, said Lisa Ayers, a communicable disease nurse for the county Health Department. It will probably never be known whether he really had it.

"We wanted to err on the side of caution and keep the individual home because there was travel history," Ayers said.

[TheLion]

Bump

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

Let's Panic.

[Jhoffa_]

I am still on the fence.

Tempest in a teapot, or global menace?

By the time it's confirmed one way or the other, it may be too late.

[Russell Scott]

I find it interesting that SARS started just as the Iraq war started. And now the World Health Org., another one of these idiotic United Nations bureaucracies, starts screaming FIRE! FIRE! in a crowded theater, just as the UN political clout regarding their failed Iraq policy falls apart. In other words, is SARS nothing but another fraudulent attempt by the UN to gain political power, since they lost so much credibility and power over the Iraq issue? I say YES!

[Thumper1960]

Why worry about Iraqi bio-weapons when the Red Chinese-true to Communist form-screwed up and released their own bio-weapon.Accidently, of course.

It makes ya wonder.

[realpatriot71]

It could be that this particular virus has an enzyme that recognizes and incorporates other viral nucleic acid and incorporates the alien viral nucleic acid with it's own. In this way, whenever the virus ran into another different virus, the chance for mutation would be very high. Many times this would result in a deletrious mutation(s) in the viral genome, but it would only take one newly mutated and functioning virus to make a million.

How that for tin foil on this day, april 24 :-)