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Re: Time required to mount an effective response to the SARS outbreak

The old saying about "Nothing focuses the mind like being on the wrong end of a gun" comes to mind.

You may very well be right, which will be very bad news.

Do you view this as a pandemic, in the early stages, where the agent is loose in the population, centered in a closed and lying society, containable only in the most advanced facilities, requiring expensive and rare equipment and drugs to stabilize?

Do you feel that if this agent arrives in any number of third world countries the price of real estate gets real cheap?

And do you think that all species are subject to cycles of sustained growth and sudden calamity?

If you do, then you are not alone.
Judging from my overflowing e-mail.

I don't think we know enough about this thing yet to make too many suppositions. Your questions are enlightening. When you stumble across something entirely new, you have no given spot to put both feet on the ground - that takes establishing what the thing is, and then studying how it works. From that comes 'where'd it come from?' 'do we have something that'll slow it down or stop it?' 'what's different about those that die from it as opposed to those who live through it?' etc.

I don't think all is gloom and doom. It appears at this time, and granted this is with early reports of questionable reliability, that at least health care workers now involved in treating SARS patients are able to remain uninfected by using viral control techniques - masks, gloves, hand-washing, etc. I don't know if they're gowning too, but I would.

But it's really just to early to tell - it'd be nice to see a concise report summary on existing cases, epidemiological evidence, etc. Perhaps that's too much to really ask so soon.

I dunno. Humans aren't my species. (grin)