Somebody Tell Me Again Why I'm Supposed to Be Worried

[rowyn]

According to the Wall Street Journal, SARS, the latest thing in terrifying disease, has infected 8,810 people worldwide, of whom, 802 have died.

Now, not to trivialize the deaths of anyone, but why, exactly, is this such a big deal? Let's take, oh, the flu, for comparison purposes. You know, that virus that some people get shots for every year, and many just take their chances and suffer with when they acquire it.

According to the Center for Disease Control, about 36,000 people die of the flu in the United States alone every year.

Granted, I don't know what percentage of people who contract the flu die of it every year, but I do expect the chance-of-death for people who've contracted the flu is considerably lower than the 9.1% that SARS is currently running at. Still, look at the overall odds for the USA, here:

Flu Deaths: 36,000
SARS Deaths: 0

I mean, you've got to figure this shouldn't be a big issue for us, right? If we're going to panick over something, it ought to be all those people who stagger in to work, guzzling cough medicine and suppressing nausea and running fevers of 102. Because they're the ones killing us. Not the people who happen to run a Chinese restuarant.

Really -- what am I missing here? Why does SARS get so much publicity? Why is this such a big deal? Is it somehow especially contagious and deadly, and yet, by dint of sheer medical know-how, quarantine, and treatment, the overall number of cases and deaths have been kept astonishingly low?

What's the big deal?

Comments

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Partially, the misinformation surrounding SARS has to do with it. The Chinese government denied its existence for several months untill undeniable evidence was presented. Plus, there was the double-whammy of all hospitals being shut down in Toronto, something that never happened in my lifetime, nor my parents, even during Polio epidemics, with health care workers becoming infected despite precautions and the WHO saying the cause had not been determine; yet the incredibly slanted, government funded, Canadian news sources were saying "THERE IS NO PROBLEM HERE. CALM DOWN AND GO HOME."

Who to believe? Hysterical reporters... or... hysterical government reporters? I felt touched by superstition. One might catch it, one might not recover, and there was no clear way of protecting against it, except avoiding anyone that was coughing in airports, or looked like they had been to Hong Kong, Singapore or China, had relatives there, or might have relatives there.

In fact, while I was in Toronto, the daily "potentially infected and being observed" number was repeated, over and over, and increased slowly. The number of deaths also kept counting up, but the number of people recovered and released didn't. There was the sensation that there was a vast ward of people, who might die, but hadn't yet because they were being pumped full of drugs. With once again, no trustworthy source of information.

By comparison, everyone knows what the flue is, how one can get it, and that you're likely to recover on your own.

[rowyn]

True, good point. Though I have to wonder if shutting down all the hospitals in Toronto was an overreaction. The current totals show 321 cases in Canada and 33 dead ... it seems like more damage would be caused by denying emergency services than by staying open and risking the spread of disease.

OTOH, maybe it would've been much worse if they hadn't shut down the hospitals. It's certainly something that would've been difficult to judge at the time.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Last I heard, about a month ago, it was 208 cases and 11 dead. Did you see anything about the people who had recovered?