Only if you're wearing one of these. 
Posted on 04/28/2003 8:27:19 PM PDT by InShanghai
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People around the world are overreacting to SARS (news - web sites), creating a sense of panic that could overwhelm common-sense measures for containing the virus, top AIDS (news - web sites) experts said on Monday.
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Sensational media coverage of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed 326 people worldwide, has fanned the flames, said David Baltimore, who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on how viruses cause disease.
"I think there has been overreaction," Baltimore, a leading AIDS researcher who is now president of the California Institute of Technology, said in a telephone interview.
"I have to agree with that," added Dr. David Ho, another top AIDS expert who heads the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York.
"Obviously, the fear comes from the fact that this is a novel disease. Many aspects of this epidemic are still mysterious. Fear of SARS is outrunning SARS per se," Ho added.
Ho and Baltimore ought to know. AIDS kills virtually everyone it infects without treatment and 20 years into the AIDS epidemic there is no cure and no vaccine.
In contrast, 94 percent of SARS patients recover.
Baltimore said World Health Organization (news - web sites) moves have been appropriate, such as the controversial recommendation against travel to Toronto, where 21 people have died from SARS.
But boycotts of Chinese-owned businesses and scenes of people walking the streets of Hong Kong wearing surgical masks show that the general public does not understand the real dangers, Baltimore said.
"As much as overreaction, there has been a lack of balance, of putting it into perspective, because it is a real problem, no question," Baltimore said.
"But people clearly have reacted to it with a level of fear that is incommensurate with the size of the problem and I think it is getting in the way of a reasonable response."
"IRRESPONSIBLE" COVER-UP
The government in China, where SARS appears to have originated late last year, has been criticized for covering up the initial outbreak -- but officials there have said they feared creating the sort of panic that has been seen.
"The Chinese government was totally irresponsible in covering it up," Baltimore said. "We can't get away from that. It is a demonstration of the value of openness."
WHO has praised Vietnam for its response -- which was to immediately call for international help in handling its own outbreak of SARS. WHO has declared Vietnam to be free of SARS.
"This thing literally never would have happened on anything like the scale it happened if the Chinese had been open about it from the beginning," Baltimore said.
SARS, caused by a relative of one of the common cold viruses, has infected an estimated 5,300 people in nearly 30 countries. It has a mortality rate of about 6 percent, which is higher than comparable respiratory diseases such as influenza.
But while SARS is new and frightening, its impact, so far, has been minor. In a mild year, influenza and its complications kill an estimated 250,000 people around the world. Malaria kills at least a million, mostly children.
Yet earlier this month two Chinese runners were asked to pull out of a marathon in the Netherlands because of SARS fears. Many cities have reported people are avoiding Chinatown districts -- including New York, where no SARS cases have been confirmed.
"What happened to Hong Kong, for example, with the hotel occupancy rate at 2 percent, is an overreaction," Ho said.
Much can be blamed on media coverage, Baltimore said. "What we are seeing is a playing up of the things that make people worry," he said.
But, he added, perhaps scary reports are just giving readers and viewers what they want.
"In some sense people like to be frightened," he said. "And so, to some extent what I am saying is a denial of what seems to be a basic human instinct -- to get a sort of frisson (shiver) of excitement out of danger. And the press is playing into that."
I don't believe SARS will disappear. There will be more cases, especially in China, and the next season for the virus will hopefully be mild and well watched.
Well, sure, most people do worry about contracting a virus that they could die from, especially when no one is quite sure how it is spread.
I'm sure Drs. Ho and Baltimore would not like SARS to steal any attention (or money) from AIDS research.
Only if you're wearing one of these.
It's a good article. Posting it was a good idea.
FR has so many articles that it is almost impossible to be sure an article has not already been posted.
I look forward to your posts. Believable news from inside Shanghai is hard to come by (although I join with many others in wishing you and your family would find a way to leave).
| SARS Mortality Rates Based on World Health Organization data (Revised: 4/29am) |
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| Area | Recoveries to date | Deaths to date | Recent** Death Rate | Active Cases still in Danger | Projected Future Deaths | Projected Final Mortality | |
| Hong Kong | 710 | 138 | 13.8% | 709 | 98 | 15.2% | |
| Singapore | 137 | 23 | 11.7% | 39 | 5 | 13.9% | |
| China | 1299 | 131 | 28.7% | 1484 | 425 | 19.1% | |
| Canada | 77 | 18 | 20.7% | 47 | 10 | 19.5% | |
| World-wide | 2239 | 293 | 18.5% | 2304 | 426 | 14.9% | |
| ** ( Deaths in the last 7 days) / ( Deaths + Recoveries in the last 7 days) | |||||||
| Trend - Active Cases Still in Danger | |||||||
| Date | Hong Kong | Singapore | China | Canada | World-wide | ||
| Apr 19 | 914 | 61 | 307 | 66 | 1616 | ||
| Apr 20 | 893 | 64 | 497 | 66 | 1694 | ||
| Apr 21 (est.) | 872 | 66 | 686 | 66 | 1771 | ||
| Apr 22 | 874 | 60 | 708 | 61 | 1783 | ||
| Apr 23 | 831 | 58 | 968 | 58 | 2005 | ||
| Apr 24 | 812 | 55 | 1058 | 58 | 2059 | ||
| Apr 25 | 781 | 50 | 1209 | 51 | 2169 | ||
| Apr 26 | 774 | 51 | 1346 | 47 | 2304 | ||
| Apr 27 (est.) | 738 | 45 | 1415 | 47 | 2336 | ||
| Apr 28 | 709 | 39 | 1484 | 47 | 2387 | ||
| (includes new daily cases... excludes cases resolved by death or recovery) | |||||||
Don't forget to take your flu buddy before bed tonight! :-))
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