[LuisBasco]

The deputy director of the city's health department, Liang Wannian, said similar numbers of new cases -- about 100 a day -- can be expected for the foreseeable future. "I think it will take us a long time to eliminate this disease," he said.

I can't help but "speculate" that perhaps this is a Chinese biowar experiment, no doubt intended for Taiwan-or North America, that escaped the laboratory.

[Judith Anne]

It's entirely possible that you (and others, like Betty Jo) are absolutely correct about this being a biowarfare ploy that has gone out of control...lending support to that theory is the story, now largely forgotten, of all the international, world-class microbiologists who died, were murdered, committed suicide, or disappeared over the winter of 2001-2002. I have seen no authoritative person anywhere who is willing to rule out bioterror.

Or it could simply be another flavor in nature's stew.

Either way, lately I have been generally focussing on the implications for the average American, and particularly on the implications for those who will be dealing with the illness, health-care workers.

There is so little useful information...if it were bioterror, it would be nice if the "inventor" also invented a cure, treatment, or vaccine...

[Conservative Me]

You and I share the same idea of where the disease may have come from. When I first thought about it I thought I had a paranoid conspiracy theory, but in today's world, IMO, it is not that far fetched.

The mortality rate is almost 7% according to these numbers...very scary. If this was a bioterror product, they have a good indication of the effects. Let's hope they make a vaccine or some kind of effecitve treatment soon.

[Domestic Church]

Initally I was leaning towards it being a manmade bug too but it doen't seem to be and it doesn't look tinkered either:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/viewer.fcgi?val=NC_004718

Scroll and read the words in blue if the rest isn't in your ballpark of vocabulary.When you get down to the mat_peptides look at the words above the np #... evidence=not experimental.