Perspective

[Merrion]

<400 - The total world wide fatalities attributed to SARS (this week quarantine restrictions were placed on UK school children returning from Hong Kong)

>11,000 - The annual death toll due to firearms in the US alone (this week a law was enacted protecting the firearms industry from negligence claim lawsuits..the only industry to have such protection).

>1,000,000 - The annual world wide death toll due to malaria (in the week that scientists announced a breakthrough discovery that might counter the disease's ability to mutate immunity to drugs)

[Shaggy Hiker]

Those are interesting numbers, but I wonder what your point was. Are you suggesting that the world is over-reacting to SARs?

I have felt that way at times, but we have to realize that SARs is a disease which lends itself to contagion. Malaria is a parasite spread through mosquitoes, a difficult nut to crack, but completely different from SARs. A disease like ebola does not lend itself to contagion, because the effects are such that it is likely to kill off the host before they have a chance at transmission. I forget the exact details on that, but it means that the disease, while deadly, is not likely to spread.

SARs is easily spread prior to incapacitating or fatal symptoms, so it is a disease that can spread quickly and efficiently. In the abscense of direct treatment, when the disease is potentially fatal, quarantine is just about the only means of stopping transmission.

While the death toll is low, it doesn't have to be. To get the death toll up into the respectable range, we only have to ignore the problem.

[MerrionComputin]

> 2,000,000 annual worldwide death toll to tuberculosis - a disease transmitted by the same method as SARS.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Isn't it still common practice to isolate in some areas?

By the way, was I correct in assuming that you feel that the quarantining is an over reaction?

I'm not sure that it's a good idea, but I don't see what other option we should take? However, if that wasn't the reason behind your post, my response is out of line.

[MerrionComputin]

I'm only really commenting on the news media's reaction. The health service and immigration control are just reacting to public pressure.

Currently in HK if you refuse to wear a mask in any university exam you can be failed.

[Shaggy Hiker]

OK, that's nuts.

I really love the news media. Everything has to be sensational. However, I think the finer example of over-reacting in the US would be West Nile virus. Considering that most people are unharmed by it, and don't even show symptoms before building life-long immunity, even reporting on this issue seems like a waste of breath. Yet we see hysteria mount to controlling mosquitoes because of what amounts to a silly issue. Pigs kill more people annually than that virus ever will.

[nishantp]

Originally posted by Shaggy Hiker
OK, that's nuts.

I really love the news media. Everything has to be sensational. However, I think the finer example of over-reacting in the US would be West Nile virus. Considering that most people are unharmed by it, and don't even show symptoms before building life-long immunity, even reporting on this issue seems like a waste of breath. Yet we see hysteria mount to controlling mosquitoes because of what amounts to a silly issue. Pigs kill more people annually than that virus ever will.

Pigs? Viruses include AIDS, Ebola, Malaria and a lot more. Its a big number. West Nile has left people who have survived paralysed, and handicapped in numerous ways. While I agree that they are blown highly out of proportion, viruses as a whole are a big risk.

I'm wondering why we havn't seen any very lethal diseases. Bubonic plague was a lot worse than SARS ever will be - although SARS is already mutating.

[KayJay]

SARS, being only diagonsiable and not treatable, is creating panic among the health people. Other illnesses, with far greater mortality rates, at least, have some kind of workable treatment and/or cure. Not SARS. The known devil is far more prefferrable than the unknown angel, and most certainly, much more than the unknown devil!

[Shaggy Hiker]

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that viruses as a whole are of little concern, just that the West Nile Virus is of less concern than the coverage it has been getting.

The bubonic plague is still around. My understanding is that when it killed between 30 and 50% of the worlds population back in the fourteenth century, it was an unusual dual prong form. I guess there is a pneumonia form, and some other form. The Black Death was a combination of both forms hitting at once. The perfect storm of plague.