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rowynAccording 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?
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?
no subject
Date: 2003-06-24 01:20 pm (UTC)PANIC!
Hmm. Yeah, could be. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-24 04:47 pm (UTC)Malaria, about five million a year?
SARS is a much safer thing to worry about.
There is a bizarre mindset that goes into risk calculation; almost a "safety in numbers" that is, on examination, somewhat irrational. A hundred people in an airplane crash will get a hundred times the attention given to ten thousand people dead in car accidents.
===|==============/ Level Head
no subject
Date: 2003-06-24 04:56 pm (UTC)What irks me is the disproportionate measures people take to "protect" themselves from SARS (like not going to Chinatown O.o) or anthrax-laced envelopes (like opening your mail with gloves and a mask on). I really liked the antrhrax website whose "tips to protect yourself" were along the lines of "Eat right, get some exercise, and see your doctor periodically, because this will have A MUCH GREATER IMPACT on your lifespan than anything you could do about a highly unlikely form of terrorist attack".
Re:
Date: 2003-06-24 05:17 pm (UTC)And reducing your level of stress by teaching yourself to think about such things reasonably would help a lot of folks, perhaps even more.
We are pretty resilient -- but we don't recover well from what we think about ourselves.
===|==============/ Level Head