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I don't think we know enough about this thing yet to make too many suppositions. Your questions are enlightening. When you stumble across something entirely new, you have no given spot to put both feet on the ground - that takes establishing what the thing is, and then studying how it works. From that comes 'where'd it come from?' 'do we have something that'll slow it down or stop it?' 'what's different about those that die from it as opposed to those who live through it?' etc.

I don't think all is gloom and doom. It appears at this time, and granted this is with early reports of questionable reliability, that at least health care workers now involved in treating SARS patients are able to remain uninfected by using viral control techniques - masks, gloves, hand-washing, etc. I don't know if they're gowning too, but I would.

But it's really just to early to tell - it'd be nice to see a concise report summary on existing cases, epidemiological evidence, etc. Perhaps that's too much to really ask so soon.

I dunno. Humans aren't my species. (grin)

The next pandemic is now ready for take-off

(Filed: 23/03/2003)

The devastating effects of a mystery pathogen have given rise to fears of a modern-day Black Death. Doctors say it is not a question of if such a virus will emerge but when - and, as Lorraine Fraser reveals, millions of air travellers could spread it round the globe.

As he shuffled through the lobby of the Hotel Metropole, the elderly professor was feeling feverish and faint. At the lift, he steadied himself for a moment in the open doorway before his body convulsed in a series of wracking coughs that sprayed fine droplets of saliva onto the walls and the people waiting inside.

The 64-year-old doctor, from Guangdong province in southern China, was in Hong Kong last month to attend a wedding reception. He never made it. On February 22, he was admitted to a hospital on Hong Kong Island. Ten days later he was dead.

His symptoms had been those of pneumonia but doctors were baffled when his condition failed to respond to conventional treatment. In the end, they could only stand by as his lungs, infected by an unknown pathogen, expanded until they were unable to transfer oxygen to his bloodstream and he suffocated.

He left a deadly legacy. Within days, seven people who had come into contact with him at the hotel had been struck down with the same illness, along with seven hospital staff who had treated him. They in turn spread it unwittingly to others.

By the time the authorities woke up to what was happening, the virus - believed to be a mutant strain of pneumonia - had spread with stunning speed and devastating effect not just around Hong Kong, but across Asia, Europe and America.

It appeared to be the sort of unfolding medical nightmare that terrifies health officials: an unidentified, seemingly untreatable, lethal virus was ravaging the world like a modern-day Black Death.

By yesterday, more than 350 suspected cases of what has now been given the name severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), had been reported to the World Health Organisation. So far, more than 10 people have died. Scores of travellers are now under observation in hospitals around the world, including two in Britain.

The source of the condition is still unclear. However, details about the professor, unearthed by medical investigators in the past few days, suggest a strong link to an outbreak of atypical pneumonia in southern China's Guangdong province, which has affected 305 people since last November, killing five.

Such is the WHO's concern, that it has urged people to call their doctors immediately if they have a high fever (above 38C) and a cough or breathing difficulties after recently travelling to a country where Sars has been reported, or having had contact with a Sars case. The organisation's director-general, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, had no hesitation last week in calling the mysterious illness a "world-wide threat".
Dr Brundtland's strident declaration reflects a genuine concern among infectious disease specialists about the spread of Sars and its risks. But behind them is another nagging fear: the possible threat of a new global influenza pandemic.

The worst pandemic in history, the "Spanish Flu" of 1918-1919, killed at least 20 million people, while hundreds of thousands died of "Asian Flu" in 1957 and the milder "Hong Kong Flu" in 1968. New influenza viruses, some of the most infectious known to man, arise frequently in the Far East.

In China, in particular, the common combination of a dense, young population living in close proximity with farmed animals, such as ducks, chickens and pigs, provides the ideal environment for infectious respiratory viruses to mix, mutate and spread - just as Sars did.