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SARS is here to stay, but no need to panic
Times of India ^
| APRIL 27, 2003
| KALPANA JAIN
Posted on 04/27/2003 6:11:14 PM PDT by Lessismore
NEW DELHI: Now that the common cold virus has surfaced in a virulent form as SARS, it will not leave the environment. Just like influenza, which first struck in 1918, people need to learn to deal with it.
"SARS will spread. We cannot avoid it. As time passes, the mortality will come down," says emeritus medical scientist and former director of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Dr K K Datta. "People should not panic, but report to a hospital if they have any symptoms," he says.
Pneumonia kills several thousand people a year. In 2000, 1.3 million people in the US were admitted to hospitals with pneumonia, of whom about 64,000 died. Globally, an estimated four million children die every year due to respiratory tract infections, with a majority being reported from India. Tuberculosis alone claims over 1,000 lives every day in India.
But as far as SARS is concerned, there are still gaps in knowledge about it and, hence the scare. But, till now, only 3 per cent of the infected have developed the acute form of the disease.
"There is nothing like an infected or an affected country anymore. It's just that some have reported and some have not," says Datta. Not all, who come in close contact with SARS patients, will not develop clinical symptoms of the disease. Eventually, there will be few benefits in putting suspected people through home quarantine, says Datta.
Experts caution that the diagnostic tests are not "foolproof"."The disease is as contagious as an open tuberculosis case," says K K Aggarwal of the Indian Medical Association. SARS is nowhere close to the first known pandemic caused by a mutant virus that the world suffered — the ‘Spanish flu' of 1918 which killed over 20 million people. This deadly influenza originated from pigs and was spread by soldiers during World War I.
Two other mutant forms of the flu virus that have travelled all over the world since 1918 are the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968. Both these viruses, too, are known to have mutated in pigs.
Comment: Despite the Central health ministry's assurances that the medical systems are in full alert to meet the SARS emergency, the example, first of Bhopal and now of Kolkata, show that this is far from the case. An action plan should be detailed by the Centre and circulated to all state capitals for dissemination further down the line.
TOPICS: Front Page News
KEYWORDS: sars
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Some societies are much more fatalistic that others. By the tone of this story, it's not clear whether India would fight the disease.
To: Lessismore
I'm old enough to remember the polio epidemics.
People, especially kids, were dying in large numbers.
They would quarantine infectious patients for a while, and close the neighborhood swimming pools; but life went on as normal.
My brother was paralyzed with polio, but he was lucky and he recovered thanks to some good family conducted therapy.
To: Lessismore
Of course they'll fight the disease, that's a stupid comment. He's just presenting the reality which is: SARS isn't that nasty a disease, it's only scary because there are more unknowns than knowns, but it's here and it looks like it's not going to disappear. Welcome to the new reality, new diseases popup periodically we haven't had a newbie since AIDS and herpes showed up, but here we are. Slowly but surely we're starting to see the calm heads coming out and processing the numbers. This disease doesn't transmit well and it's not very deadly, there's still a lot of studying to be done but the time for blind panic has passed.
3
posted on
04/27/2003 6:20:46 PM PDT
by
discostu
(A cow don't make ham)
To: Lessismore
SARS is possibly a greater threat than the Media would have us believe.
Excuse me for suggesting that the sky might be falling.
I suggest that this could be the case anyhow.
Matthew 24:6-8)
4
posted on
04/27/2003 6:24:55 PM PDT
by
Radix
(The sky is not falling, not yet.)
To: Radix
SARS is a much LOWER threat than the media would have us believe. They have completely overhyped this, it's Summer 2001 Florida Shark Attacks all over again.
5
posted on
04/27/2003 6:26:50 PM PDT
by
discostu
(A cow don't make ham)
To: Lessismore
But as far as SARS is concerned, there are still gaps in knowledge about it and, hence the scare. But, till now, only 3 per cent of the infected have developed the acute form of the disease. I guess that means the other additional 12% who died shouldn't be considered acute.
/sarcasm
To: Prince Charles
Where did he come up with that figure?
7
posted on
04/27/2003 6:31:42 PM PDT
by
Dog Gone
To: Dog Gone
Uh-huh. Perhaps he got it from ChiCom talking points?
To: discostu
SARS is a much LOWER threat than the media would have us believe. They have completely overhyped this, it's Summer 2001 Florida Shark Attacks all over again. So is AIDS, but that doesn't mean it is not going to wind up costing millions to control it. AIDS could have been controlled if only a quarantine was established and maintained. To allow SARS to become endemic to the population while there is still a chance to contain it would be criminal.
9
posted on
04/27/2003 6:40:57 PM PDT
by
eggman
To: Dog Gone
Where did he come up with that figure? I'm convinced that Indian reporters are judged largely on their creativity.
10
posted on
04/27/2003 7:11:13 PM PDT
by
per loin
To: discostu
SARS is a much LOWER threat than the media would have us believe. From the New York Times:
GUANGZHOU, China, April 27 ? The outbreak of a new respiratory disease has inflicted the greatest blow to the Chinese economy since the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989, causing a plunge in retail sales, a slump in demand for some Chinese exports and a near-collapse in domestic and foreign tourism.
J. P. Morgan Chase, which does investment banking in China, estimates that after expanding at a torrid annual rate of 9.9 percent in the first quarter, the Chinese economy is actually shrinking at an annual rate of 2 percent in the second quarter.
11
posted on
04/27/2003 7:17:49 PM PDT
by
per loin
To: eggman
AIDS couldn't have been controlled. We could barely even properly diagnose it and that wasn't until symptoms showed up upto 10 years after infection. Even now that we can test for it the test isn't 100% accurate until 6 months after infection. Who do you quarantine when you can't even figure out who has a disease until 6 months after they get it? SARS is ALREADY endemic in the population, it was before we even gave it a name. It is a disease now established in the general population. Of course it doesn't transmit well and it's fatality rate is pretty minor, the only reason it's on every's lips is that our media needs panic to survive and they feed that monkey every chance they get. In the 6 months since SARS showed up it's traveled to fewer areas, infected fewer people and killed fewer victims than our annual flu outbreak does in half the time. It's a non-issue that's only interesting because it's new, once we've actually figured out how it works nobody is going to care about it anymore.
12
posted on
04/27/2003 7:22:10 PM PDT
by
discostu
(A cow don't make ham)
To: per loin
That's called panic. Beijing has become a hollow city because everybody's gone all freaky, that's bad for the economy. On top of that our own media has created such a frenzy of paranoia that tourism to Asia has dropped to nil (again, very similar th FA in the summer of 2001) which is also bad for the economy. Something that hasn't even killed 300 people in 6 months worldwide simply does not warrant the paranoia SARS is generating. You were more likely to win the lottery in the last 6 months than die of SARS. Seriously overhyped.
13
posted on
04/27/2003 7:30:10 PM PDT
by
discostu
(A cow don't make ham)
To: discostu
In the 6 months since SARS showed up it's traveled to fewer areas, infected fewer people and killed fewer victims than our annual flu outbreak does in half the time. Flu does not typically require hospitalization for most people who contract it. If that is the case for SARS, then it is nothing to worry about. But that is not the case unless there are thousands of SARS cases not that are not being hospitalized. The hit this will have for heath care costs and insurance rates will be enormous.
SARS can take a healthy person and put them in the hospital for a week or more. That's much worse than the annual flu outbreak. Most of the deaths from flu are people who have weakened immune systems. That has not been the case with SARS from what I have read.
14
posted on
04/27/2003 7:51:30 PM PDT
by
eggman
To: discostu
And in the next six months?
15
posted on
04/27/2003 7:56:43 PM PDT
by
per loin
To: discostu
You were more likely to win the lottery in the last 6 months than die of SARS.That is true for here so far, but not for Canada. The odds on winning the Lotto (the big prize) in my state is a bit less than one in 11 million. A random Canadian is about seven times more likely than that to have died of SARS in the last two months.
16
posted on
04/27/2003 8:18:05 PM PDT
by
per loin
To: eggman
We don't know if SARS has required hospitalization for most people who contracted it, we have no idea how many have gone undetected and undiagnosed or even misdiagnosed (remember the first SARS death in Canada was initially diagnosed a heart attack). Actually I've seen people knocked down by the flu for months at a stretch, most of the major epidemics of the 20th century were from the flu, just because most flu bugs are nothing more than a tough cold don't knock the whole class. From what I've read a big chunk of SARS deaths were from the hospital in Toronto, people in the emergency room when they got the bug, not people at the pinacle of health.
17
posted on
04/27/2003 9:39:12 PM PDT
by
discostu
(A cow don't make ham)
To: per loin
In the next two weeks Canada will have their outbreak under control. Shortly after that the non-communist Asian nations will get their outbreaks under control. Because of China's antiquated and socialized medical system they will continue to have problem for a number of months. By Independance Day SARS will be the disaster that never happened, and all the doom criers will pull a Garafalo and insist they were absolutely right the whole time.
18
posted on
04/27/2003 9:43:48 PM PDT
by
discostu
(A cow don't make ham)
To: discostu
And the degree of confidence that you have in your prophesy?
19
posted on
04/27/2003 10:00:02 PM PDT
by
per loin
To: discostu
I certainly hope you are correct.
It's no secret on these threads that I disagree with your position, but you make a good argument and I hope to be in the wrong.
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