By Charles Ortleb
As scientists struggle today with the problem of not finding the SARS-associated coronavirus in most of the patients with the syndrome, wouldn't it be nice if someone would publish a complete list of all the viruses (animal and human) that the patients have been tested for?
Actually, what might be the most helpful, and the most revealing, is the list of viruses the patients have not been tested for.
Is there any other part of the SARS story that's more important now than the fact that the coronavirus may only be part of the puzzle or that it's a huge mistake? Journalists should keep the heat on the CDC on this one. Don't hold your breath.
Meanwhile, dogs and cats are now suspected carriers of SARS in Beijing. They're being taken from the homes of SARS patients and killed. That should raise this crisis to a new prominence in the media.
In the Philippines, some leaders in the livestock industry fear that meat might transmit SARS , and legislators are calling for a boycott of all meat from China. There is still no indication that pigs or other barnyard edibles in China have even been tested yet for the SARS coronavirus. All the quarantines in the world may do nothing to wipe this illness out if animals are a growing unrecognized reservoir of the SARS virus(es).
Charles Ortleb is the author of The Closing Argument and the co-author of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Follies.
This statement is not correct, although it is not entirely incorrect either. Since this is the underlying premise for his whole article, his conclusions are in doubt but not guaranteed to be wrong. (How's THAT for inconclusive..)
Only Canada has failed to find the SARS virus in most of its patients. Canada has reported it found SARS in only 40% of its patients, but it is not clear if that included "suspected" cases as well as "probable" cases.
ALL nations have found that finding the virus early in the course of the disease is very difficult. It may take 10 days AFTER a person is symptomatic before the virus can be found reliably. A high false negative rate early in the course of the disease has been the major problem with EVERY diagnostic test thus far developed.
In short, Ortleb's assertion that the SARS virus is not being found in most of the patients with SARS is not supported by the evidence. However, the very obvious difficulty we are having finding SARS early in the course of the disease is most definitely one the major problems with SARS. Since we know a lot less about SARS than we like to think, it is possible that Ortleb is on to something, even if he mangled some of his facts.