Do you think SARS is that serious?

[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]

SARS is being over hyped

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?!?!?!

[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.


[edit]i am slowly going insane[/edit]

[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.

[�.C.]

if I'm repeating than disregard me I didn't read the follow up posts

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.