Posted on 02/28/2006 4:36:59 PM PST by blam
Whatever happened to ... the Sars pandemic?
Iain Hollingshead
Saturday February 25, 2006
The Guardian (UK)
It has all been bird flu this week, but it is not so long since the spectre of a Sars pandemic was hogging the headlines. Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a pneumonia-like coronavirus that first emerged in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in November 2002. Eight months later, the international spread of Sars-CoV had resulted in 8,098 cases and 774 deaths in 26 countries.
"Surviving is even worse than dying," said one sufferer in Hong Kong. Many victims were left with debilitating bone disorders from drugs used to treat the disease. Economic damage was estimated in billions of dollars by the time the last country, Taiwan, was removed from the World Health Organisation's list of infected areas in July 2003.
It had been an arduous battle to get to this stage. At the pinnacle of the epidemic, 65 new cases were announced in a single day in Taiwan. Two hundred cases were reported in one Hong Kong residential block alone. China threatened to execute anyone who breached quarantine orders. Carlo Urbani, the WHO official who identified Sars, died of the disease on March 29.
Almost three years later, the world has learned significant political and medical lessons from the outbreak. China was forced to apologise for its slow response after its officials were accused of covering up the true extent of the virus's spread. The Hong Kong health secretary, Yeoh Eng-kiong, resigned in July 2004 after a report criticised his handling of the crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
It just goes to show if you give any problem enough media attention, it will go away (sic)...
Just as the "global cooling" scare turned into global warming when the cooling scare didn't take off.
Not enough tax money was spent so they came up with bird flu. If governments don't cough up the green (sorry) then bird flu will be dropped and another pandemic horror show will be ginned up to take it's place.
This week?,it's been years,what happened to swine flu?,oh,I forgot,this ain't 1918 anymore;)
Don't forget Monkey Pox! Let's kill them ground hogs!
I'd forgotten about THAT time we were all gonna' die!
Replace boldface text as necessary with the crisis du jour.
It is to be found in the same place is the "Swine Flu", soon to be joined with the "Bird Flu."
Swine Flu
Hillary with a cold
To be honest with you, I can't believe I am still alive. With the massive and dangerous shortage of flue vaccines last, I should have died!
Laughed so hard I wet my pants at that one!!!
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