Unidentified Illness Kills 5 in China

Newsday.com ^ | Feb. 11, 2003 | JOE McDONALD

[FairOpinion]

BEIJING -- Anxious residents of southern China stocked up on medicine and wore surgical masks on the streets Tuesday after an unidentified illness killed at least five people, left hundreds hospitalized and sent health officials scrambling to find its source.

"We did not realize it was a serious epidemic, so we did not take it seriously at the beginning," the official said.

[FairOpinion]

Unidentified illnesses are always a concern, and especially in today's climate the first thing one wonders about whether some nasty bug accidentally or deliberately is loose. From the article, I would guess it's a natural outbreak, but who knows these days.

[CholeraJoe]

Influenza or Legionaire's disease.

[FairOpinion]

It said "Unidentified".

Considering that it's been around since Nov, just now reaching epidemic proportions, if it were something obvious, such as Legionnaire's or influenza, they would have identified it by now. Sounds like some nasty viral infection.

[CholeraJoe]

As a respiratory infection, there are only a couple of exotic possibilities - Anthrax, plague, hantavirus - none of which are hard to identify if you have the right equipment and training. The article talked about antibiotics but influenza doesn't respond to antibiotics and Legionella only responds to some. Legionella doesn't grow on standard culture media.