Do you think SARS is that serious?

[superdesk2007]

Do you think SARS is that serious?

[HoppysMag]

the worst part about sars, is the panic that people cause... that and the no good media these days...

[Fatjon]

No im do not think it is serious, well at least in the US.

[JesseB]

personally I beleive the world will overcome the SARS epidemic (still mainly asian continent right?) most major illnesses throughout the history of the world had their way with a large number of the population, sadly to say, before we came up with vaccinations and anti-biotics to neutralize the disease. So in a matter of time (no matter how long it takes it will be worth the wait) the scientific/medical community will figure out what makes SARS tick and end it.

[Grasshopper]

Yea, it's serious, but only to a certain extent. If someone in your family, or someone you knew had it, I think it'd jump 400 points on your 'seriousness meter'. But compared to many of life threatening diseases, it's not as bet (at least, yet).

[Trench]

Well, if it hits home to anyone here then they will find it serious... But, I think it is serious onl because of the hype it is getting...

[superdesk2007]

I think they'll get a vaccine soon and won't release it until they do all that testing.

[Star_Base_CGI]

Yes if people get it, they will go to school, church work and infect everyone. Than drop dead from Pnuemonia. If it hits the US we will have a major epidemic.

My advice if it hits. Dont goto CHurch and stuff like that.

[HoppysMag]

Originally posted by Star_Base_CGI
Yes if people get it, they will go to school, church work and infect everyone. Than drop dead from Pnuemonia. If it hits the US we will have a major epidemic.

My advice if it hits. Dont goto CHurch and stuff like that.

nice excuse to skip school;) :p

[Army]

Originally posted by Star_Base_CGI
If it hits the US we will have a major epidemic.
It IS in the USA and Canada already.

It's only a worldwide epidemic now, because the stupid media wonks want it to be. Think about it: it apparantly started in a country with well over a BILLION people, and it isn't really out of control there. A few thousand infected in China isn't even a drop in the bucket percentage wise.

There are less than 100 dead in North America since the first reports came out about it. More people have died from slipping in the bathtub THIS MONTH! More people have already died from Pneumonia, brought on by KNOWN flu viruses, in the LAST MONTH than have died from SARS.

Real epidemic? Nah. At least not officially, and certainly not by the numbers. Gimme a good ol' medieval Black Plague anyday, now THERE was an epidemic you could sink you teeth into.............um,.... eww.

[Blazestorm]

lol ARMY

Dat's funny... anyway, I think its pretty silly... its like saying the common cold is going to kill us all... its a virus that is infected everyone atleast once in their life and without medication... you can die from a cold... whereas this... we haven't encountered very seriously before... so now we must find a medication to take care of it...

[graycie]

I think it is a serious issue not only health wise but also economicly. Health wise its very serious in in countries like China where people live in pretty close quarters and the population is so high. There have been a few cases in the US and Canada which they think started with people that recently came back from an Asian country. People can be carrying it without knowing it, but on the other hand the people that are more suceptable to actually dying from it are the elderly and people with week immune systems.If you really think about it people carry various types of bacteria on a daily basis and sometimes that even includes Staph, and a Staph infection isn't a pretty thing to get either but you don't see people freaking out like they are with SARS.

Economically its killing tourism in Canada, Asia, and amongst Chinatowns withing the US. Recently on the news in NY and Philadelphia they showed the mayors having dinner in Chinatown to show its safe to eat in Chinatown and to bring back needed tourism dollars for the city.

[EsPo]

in my current world events class the teacher said if you actually get sars.. you have a 96% chance of survival... nothing to worry about at all "unless you are an 84 year old asthmatic licking doorknobs" (the daily show)




propaganda to keep our eyes off the war ;);)

[LittMag]

SARS is major. Just because it's happening halfway around the world doesn't mean it isn't serious. Public places in Bejing are being shut down. Thousands of people are being place in quarantine. Not much is known about SARS at the moment, and that's why it's serious. To treat SARS all they can do is put you in isolation and let the illness run it's course. If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what does.
But as Grasshopper said, it's really just a matter of how close it is to you.

However, as Espo said and what I just read from CNN "Approximately 94 percent of people with SARS recover from it." It may seem to be good odds, but when you deal with something that you have no way to treat, it is frightening.

[steveg]

I think you all should listen to the interview in this
link http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2003/200304/20030407.html
"part 1" maybe a real voice of a real survivor will
tone down some of the sarcasim and smugness going on here,
and demonstrate just how easy it got going here in Canada

[steveg]

another link with real and current information including
that "young and health" patients are also at risk.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/sars/index.html

[PolishSausage]

Compared to all the other epidemics, SARS is a wuss...

[FooTemps]

Dude... SARS is a wuss but you've got to remember that it's just starting up. Once it gets enough people infected it'll spread like wildfire. I say it's extremely serious. I mean, we don't have a vaccine or cure yet. All we can do is wash our hands and wear those masks to combat spread. Even doing that doesn't garuntee protection either. If we don't stop it soon it'll be a really big problem.

[TransMan]

Personaly i dont think its all that serious i agree with army on this one.

I also dont belive the crap about it being a disese that crossed over from animals to humans atleast not on its own. Personaly i think it is/was a bio weapon the chinese were developing that got loose some how...

[WicKeD_WaYz]

1200 people a day die from smoking cigarettes. I think that kills way more people than sars is right now.


I also read somewhere that tens of thousands of people a year die from the common cold.

[steveg]

A person chooses to smoke a person does not choose to
be sneezed on and contact 1/25 fatal desease.

wonder what the #/25 or even #/1 000 000 death rate for
the common cold is.

Canada (Toronto) had no idea what they were dealing with
until some time after the first deaths occured.

You guy's at least are forewarned.

[Restola]

Originally posted by EsPo
propaganda to keep our eyes off the war ;);)
The hugely successful war? ;)

The media has nothing to cover except Lacy Peterson. SARS was exactly what the media needed to help full its 24/7 schedule.

[WicKeD_WaYz]

I think to get sick from it you have to be in direct, continuous, contact with the person.

I dont think it is highly contagious.

[LittMag]

Originally posted by WicKeD_WaYz
I think to get sick from it you have to be in direct, continuous, contact with the person.

I dont think it is highly contagious.

The problem with this discussion is that no one really knows what they're talking about

Taken from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/faq.htm


How is SARS spread?
The primary way that SARS appears to spread is by close person-to-person contact. Potential ways in which SARS can be spread include touching the skin of other people or objects that are contaminated with infectious droplets and then touching your eye(s), nose, or mouth. This can happen when someone who is sick with SARS coughs or sneezes droplets onto themselves, other people, or nearby surfaces. It also is possible that SARS can be spread more broadly through the air or by other ways that are currently not known.


You don't have to be in direct continuous contact.

[WicKeD_WaYz]

How is SARS spread?
The primary way that SARS appears to spread is by close person-to-person contact.



I was close

[Star_Base_CGI]

SARS is here in my nieghborhood hospital.

Its not that serious. It just causes Pneumonia and that causes the lungs to fill with fluid.

Thats no big deal cause Im sure you call can breath with yout lungs filled with snot.

Ive had Pneumonia 3 times. If I get it again I likely wont survive.

[HoppysMag]

Originally posted by Star_Base_CGI
SARS is here in my nieghborhood hospital.

Its not that serious. It just causes Pneumonia and that causes the lungs to fill with fluid.

Thats no big deal cause Im sure you call can breath with yout lungs filled with snot.

Ive had Pneumonia 3 times. If I get it again I likely wont survive.

hoppy fears for you....:( dont get pneumonia.

[Jack_Dubious]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1200000/images/_1201949_jacksonmask150.jpg

And you thought Michael Jackson was crazy!! :)


JDub

[MagMan5446]

Well, it's in the yuppy town next to mine...

[megaman]

yeah it's not "serious" until it happens to you or a family member! :rolleyes:

[AutomagRT1483]

Honestly, I think that its just some new form of the flu bug. If you take a look at the two, both have pretty much the same symtoms. The media circus has just blown this way out of proportion, heck they might as well start covering the flu season like it was football:)

[mag-hatter]

yeah it is. its claimed over 100 victoms in not that long of a time. i think it will be up there with aids except you can get this walking down the street

[WicKeD_WaYz]

Originally posted by mag-hatter
yeah it is. its claimed over 100 victoms in not that long of a time. i think it will be up there with aids except you can get this walking down the street

except everyone dies of aids eventually. This kills 1/25.

[LittMag]

Of course SARS isn't that serious. How could something that ENTIRELY shuts down one of the largest cities in the world be that serious. How could something that has prompted warnings from my school that starts with the lines "SARS is a very serious and highly infectious disease, and Penn recognizes the potential threat that it poses to the health of the campus." be that serious?

Why would my school add this to the e-mail if it weren't serious? "The University has imposed a moratorium on all University-related travel to SARS-affected areas. This applies to students participating in academic programs as well as to extra-curricular activities, and to faculty and
staff traveling on University-related and/or University ponsored business."

Everyone is comming onto this thread and stating that they know that it isn't serious when all you've probably heard is a brief media report. The fact is, no one knows how to treat SARS yet. From the CDC website "At present, the most efficacious treatment regimen, if any, is unknown." How is this not serious? You can catch SARS as easily as the common cold, but you can treat the common cold.

It's just so easy for everyone to jump on the bandwagon and blame the media. SARS is serious, just because it isn't an ebola type virus that kills everything within 2 days doesn't mean it isn't serious.

[StuDawggie]

I am a med student and get to hear about SARS all day everyday from patients who THINK they have it. What SARS is (and it's been proven) is a superpowered viral infection. In other words, it's nothing more than a cold virus on steroids. If you're worried about respitory diseases that could kill you and are really bad, worry about TB. You have a better chance of getting that then you do SARS, and it's by far worse than any pneumonia that you could get.

[CameraGuy]

I can't speak for the rest of the world, but SARS seems to have been somewhat over hyped with regards to Toronto. If I recall correctly, yesterday's paper (The Globe and Mail, for those of you in Canada) stated that there had only been somewhere around 300 confirmed cases and 23 death's in Toronto since the first case came here from China a number of weeks ago (can't recall the exact date). Few if any new cases are developing here, and the numbers of people who are still ill/quarantined are dropping steadily.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that this disease is trivial; it just doesn't seem to be the plague it was initially made out to be. At the moment, most speculation around here seems to be that the long term economic damage Toronto may suffer from the "bad" publicity it received relating to SARS will be more serious than the impact of the actual disease.

[steveg]

Camera it occurs to me that public awareness, more than
anything else is what has contained SARS in Canada, and
a lack of public awareness or even public health awareness
that let it get into Toronto and spread in the first place.

And Stu didn't TB become almost nonexistant in North America
because of the attention it recieved back when
it was more prevelant, and isn't it true that it's present
rise is somewhat caused by everone ignoring it's existance, for a while?

I still think anything that has a 1/25 fatality rate even
amounst healthly people perhaps ought to be given some
serious thought.

actually 23 out of 300 is 1.9/25 .

I wonder if not enough "hype" is even worse than to much
"hype", after all you can just ignore the "hype".

[beam]

So, SARS isn't an engineered deadly super-bug that was contrived by an underground bio-tech research facility and was then released into the general public so as to cause world wide panic and a quest for a vaccine which would really be another form of the deadly super-bug and so would infect all of those who weren't infected by the original batch? All of this, of course, so that the underground organization, which would be properly immunized, could surface to take control of the world and repopulate it from scratch and teach their offspring how to properly honor mother earth?

Where's John Clark and Domingo Chavez?!?!?! :D

[CameraGuy]

Steve, to clarify my position a little bit, I'm quite happy to see public education and awareness with respect to both this issue and most other subjects that appear in the news. The general public having some idea of what's going on is far better than the initial situation in China where at least some parts of the government attempted a cover up. I'm just not much of a fan of what could be called the "Oh my god, we're all going to die" style of journalism (with a little exaggeration on my part, granted) that seems to appear on certain news stations at times.

[steveg]

Hmm wonder which station that is (lived in Toronto until 2
years ago);)

[logamus]

i only think its serious if some crazy man is chasing you with a big gulp cup full of it. then its real serious because if he dumps a big cup of sars on you its bad news.


i am slowly going insane

[StuDawggie]

Originally posted by steveg
Stu didn't TB become almost nonexistant in North America
because of the attention it recieved back when it was more prevelant, and isn't it true that it's present rise is somewhat caused by everone ignoring it's existance, for a while?

It diminished, but I would hardly call it being nonexistant. Being in a hospital setting (trauma 1 center that has a very high homeless patient volume cuz no other city hospital will take them), I see a case of it at least once case of TB per week on average. It's very prevalent in densly populated areas with poor sanitary conditions and people living in close quarters such as a homeless shelter, or very poor (very common in 3rd world) countries. Also it doesn't help that it's spread the same way SARS is, by aresol contact. But getting back to the point TB was and really never has been ingored once the damage that it could cause was realized.

[ß.C.]

This stuff happens a lot more than people think. The media just decided to jump on it this time. The whole war thing was losing viewers so they chose a new topic. What happened to westnile and all those other diseases they ceased to talk about? The media tries to expose what will get the most attention, and this is a good thing because then the public will demand a change and problems get fixed instead of hidden by the government. It's how democracy works.