[Trust but Verify]

Yeah, it's not the people who HAVE the disease, whose 'lungs are rotting away' as you so delicately put it, who are a laugh a minute, it's those who post scare story after scare story when it simply is not warranted.

[TheBigB]

That was my point, not to attack or belittle anyone who has it.

From the TENNESSEAN...

"The state Health Department receives telephone calls ''daily'' about possible cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, but to date there are no cases of the disease in Tennessee, State Epidemiologist Allen Craig told a legislative committee yesterday.

In a special briefing requested by the House Health and Human Resources Committee, Craig reported that there are 38 probable cases of the dread disease that apparently originated in southern China last fall and has since spread to Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and Canada.

Craig said there has been ''no community spread'' of it in the United States.

Craig told the lawmakers that people at risk are those who have traveled to where the disease has been found or have associated with such travelers.

He said it spreads ''like the common cold, apparently by respiratory droplets,'' and causes death in about 4% of its victims.

He said antibiotics do not seem to affect it.

It is such a new disease that an effective treatment has yet to be found.