What do you think about the SARS? Is it a new Bleck Plague or Spanish Disease?
I think we’re going to get nailed by it.
There are signs that we’re losing control of it here in Canada, but China is the real doozy. I’m willing to bet that they’re in so much denial about it right now, they don’t even want to know how much of their population is infected.
Still, given that it will kill only about 1 in 20 people, I feel pretty confident.
As is typical for China the Communist Party and local government have denied it is out of control.
Today they have finally announced that it is out of control -
Chinese authorities ordered doctors in Beijing to hide SARS patients from a team of World Health Organisation experts last week to try to downplay the extent of the epidemic, Chinese doctors have revealed.
Authorities transferred about 40 patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome to a hotel in the grounds of one hospital, and at another facility bundled more than 30 into ambulances to prevent the WHO team from finding them, the sources said.
A worker at the hotel said several dozen patients were taken there on Tuesday morning, the day WHO officials visited two military hospitals. They were moved back that evening.
Doctors at the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital said a group of 30 SARS patients were packed into ambulances during a WHO team visit to the hospital.
“It was done to avoid detection by the WHO - we drove the patients around Beijing,” said a senior medical official. “We were ordered by the Beijing government. We don’t know if the central government was aware, but we assume it was.”
The doctors said the People’s Liberation Army also ordered the cover-up.
WHO officials have raised concerns that China was lying about the seriousness of the SARS epidemic but now say they believe the Government is getting the message.
On Friday, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao called on officials to stop falsifying SARS figures. Mr Wen also warned officials they would be punished if they misreported the seriousness of the disease.
The toll in Beijing is said to be 37, but doctors say the real number is at least 200. Chinese doctors said the Government would explain the massive jump by saying they have adopted a less strict definition of SARS.
“The reality, however, is that we’ve been hiding patients,” said a doctor at You’An Hospital, which is believed to have as many as 100 patients, but has reported only 20.
In Beijing, authorities are beginning to take stringent measures to contain the disease. University students are banned from leaving campus without a letter of permission. At least one student has died at the Beijing University of Foreign Economics and Trade, classmates said. In Taiyuan, in the poverty- stricken province of Shanxi, schools have been closed until May 8.
SARS is believed to have originated in China in November. Doctors in Guangdong noticed it was a new and virulent disease by mid-December, but provincial officials did little to deal with it until early February, and officials in Beijing waited until late March.
Hong Kong announced on Saturday that 12 more people had died there, the highest one-day death toll reported. The WHO said SARS appeared to have become more severe in a particularly alarming and puzzling outbreak in an apartment building in the territory.
The disease seemed to have struck younger, healthier people, raising the possibility the virus had mutated into a more virulent form," the WHO said.
The Washington Post
Call me when it starts killing more people than car wrecks.
the people denying the fact of the outbreak have been sacked…
ya fatality is still low but more and more healthy mid age people dying, as suppose to mostly elderly and long term patients before. besides, doctors have no idea how to cure it effectively. they are trying different drugs, dosage for different people, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt…
Damn chinks.
This one is kind of scary, but right at about 3-5% mortality isn’t exactly plague material. Plus, as far as I know, up to now we have had no deaths in the US. This tells me that we are doing pretty damn good treating the symptoms and helping the patient to pull through.
Is that because our medical system is just that much better than anyone elses?
That and, overall, people in the USA are healthier than the average person in China.
It’s a little more interesting when you live in a city like Toronto, which has 15,000 people quarantined.
But very few are actual cases. The quarantines are 10 days… or is it 2 full weeks? If you don’t have symptoms, you’re let free.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure they’ll lose control. Even if they don’t, it’s bound to spread outwards from China anyway. The only point of trying to contain it is to hope to discover a treatment before it breaks loose.
This one is kind of scary, but right at about 3-5% mortality isn’t exactly plague material.
What is? I wonder what was the mortality rate of the 1918 “flu” pandemic, for instance.
Please note that the “3-5% fatality” rate is with modern medical care.
I suspect if the disease were to get enough traction, the fatality rate would greatly increase because medical facilities would be overloaded.
–Dave
What is? I wonder what was the mortality rate of the 1918 “flu” pandemic, for instance.
Well, the flu pandemic killed somewhere between 20-40 million people within a year period. In comparison, SARS has had about three months to really start revving itself up and it has managed to kill only about 200, mostly in countries where people are so sick they die of the common cold anyway.
Dave,
The 3-5% “with modern medical care” is meaningless, since for most people SARS is just a bad cold anyway. There are no effective treatments - that “care” is just experimentation with drugs and dosages to find a cure, as well as basic stuff like keeping people fed and full on fluids.
Until there’s a real treatment, SARS will kill 3-5% of healthy people, if they’re in a hospital or not.
It seems I heard that flu outbreak in 1918 killed more people than WWI. I will go look for mortality rates, and get back with you later.
Well, I stand corrected:
The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years
So its mortality rate was actually LOWER than what SARS is being reported to have. EEP!
Maybe SARS is all a Chinese government plot to try and cull their massive population ?
The flu is apparently far more infectious though.
Maybe Saddam has unleashed biological warfare on China!
What about Canada?