[Carry_Okie]

Researchers are optimistic that better diagnostics may soon be available, now that the disease's causative agent has been firmly established; the final evidence came last week from experiments in which monkeys infected with the coronavirus developed symptoms similar to those of human SARS patients. The same week, four labs announced independently that they had sequenced the genome of the new virus.

OK, I take that one back. It looks like they have definitively identified the culprit.

[bart99]

This is so eerily like the start of the AIDS epidemic in the US some 15 or 20 years ago or so, that SARS, in ten years, may infect 10s of millions and killed millions.

This is truly a global problem that needs more than just quarantines. All countries affected right now are working on identifying causes, etc...... and hopefully will come up with a cure - or a vaccine. Soon. I hope panic doesn't drive the potential for the slowing of global economic trade - although I wouldn't mind it much if we stopped trading all together with China. *s*

[vetvetdoug]

I have it on the authority of "highly educated" Mississippi State Microbiology Graduate that this SARS outbreak is nothing to be worried about. The event is overblown. We have nothing to worry about. SARS will never spread to the US like it has in China. We have nothing to fear since no one in the US has died from the disease. (SARCASM).

Epidemiologists and those that work with diseases in populations think otherwise because of the virulence and infectivity of this virus. Extreme caution and care is indicated because this virus will spread easily. Dr. Brian at the University of Tennessee has spent the last 20 years studying the Coronaviruses and lets ask him if he is worried.

[EternalHope]

Thanks for posting such an outstanding article.

For an article about what could happen if SARS is not contained go here: If SARS gets loose

It is from an epidemiologist who simply states the obvious: If SARS gets loose, a billion people could be infected fairly quickly.