Posted on 04/23/2003 10:26:08 PM PDT by Pro-Bush
Health officials around the world are grappling with a rapidly spreading epidemic of a severe respiratory ailment known as SARS. Here's a quick look at who's at risk and other basic questions about the disease.
Q. What is SARS?
A. SARS stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome. It's a new disease that doctors still don't know much about.
Q. What are the symptoms of SARS?
A. They are a lot like pneumonia or the flu. People get a very high fever -- at least 100.4 degrees. They also usually have shortness of breath or other problems breathing and a dry cough. Some people get other symptoms, including a headache, stiff or achy muscles, a loss of appetite, fatigue, a rash and diarrhea.
Q. How do you get SARS?
A. It seems that you have to have very close contact with someone who has it. Almost all the people who have gotten SARS have either been hospital workers who cared for sick people or members of a victim's family. Doctors believe that it is spread by tiny droplets that get airborne when someone sneezes or coughs, or by contact with other bodily fluids such as blood. The people who have gotten SARS outside of Asia have all either recently traveled to Asian countries where it is spreading or had close contact with someone who recently returned from there.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Between 80 percent and 90 percent of patients get better on their own in about a week.
Both of these statements are nonsense.
Back before SARS got really serious in Toronto, I made an eBay purchase from someone in Toronto. Due to delays in getting payment and shipping information to the seller, the package went into the UPS stream yesterday. It should be here in about a week or so.
Anybody think there is a chance of a SARS germ from Toronto lingering that long to be viable by the time it gets to WA state?
So if someone sneezes or coughs into their hand(s) then grasps a door knob, everyone who touches that door knob is exposed.
Also, the experts are really worried about "super carriers." According to reports all 139 cases in Toronto can be directly or indirectly traced to one single woman who was in Hong Kong.
The World Health Orgnization (WHO) has, for the first time in its existence adviced against travel to Beijing and Toronto...can you imagine that ?!?!
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Living/ap20030423_1578.html
Tip:::Watch CHN (NYSE)China Fund Inc. (Closed End Fund) down 10.56% since last Thursday. During that same period the Standard & Poors 500 has been up 2.9%. During most of that period the war and Laci Peterson have been dominating the news...as SARS dominates more and more of the headlines you'll see CHN drop. If it really tanks; like 50% - 60% that'll tell you how much effect the SARS panic is having.
Oh! And wash your hands a lot!
Matthew 24
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Q. Could this be bioterrorism?
A. Health officials aren't ruling anything out, but they think this is something that occurred naturally, perhaps when a virus that usually only makes animals sick changed somehow and became able to make people sick.
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