[InShanghai]

"they are drawing constant parallels with flu, a much more familiar, and so far deadlier foe... influenza kills anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people every year around the world."

Where are the SARS survivors?

[Cicero]

This column is moronic. Coming from Reuters that's not surprising.

It remains to be seen how deadly SARS will prove to be. But to compare the number of deaths from a virus that is presently limited to a few thousand cases to the number of deaths in a worldwide flu epidemic suffered by hundreds of millions is like comparing apples with bombs.

[R W Reactionairy]

"Where are the SARS survivors?"

The Hong Kong SARS site lists discharged patients along with total cases [for Hong Kong only.] This site is a little odd, but if you read their latest Figures on Atypical Pnuemonia as 1 PM April 2, 2003 the discharged tally is ahoqn. The breakdown is 89 discharged out of 708 total cases. They break down this down as 51 out of 175 infected health workers and 38 out of 533 for the general populace.

http://www.info.gov.hk/dh/ap.htm

[TennesseeProfessor]

This author is incredibly stupid. The fatality rate of SARS is higher even than the Spanish Flu. And Flu in general is far less deadly and normally only affects people with weak immune systems. SARS affects healthy people. Finally, if you are concerned about the Flu, you can get a vaccine which isn't guaranteed to work but there is no vaccine at all for SARS. Add in that it is resistant to all known anti-viral treatments and that 10% or more of the victims need ventilators to breathe and you have one nasty bug.

Current cases in the US: 85.
Worldwide cases March 31st: 1622
Worldwide cases April 1st: 1804
WorldWide cases April 2nd: 2223

[opinionator]

In the United States, with a vaccine and modern medical care widely available, flu kills at least 36,000 people a year.

16,000 AIDS related deaths in the U.S. in 2001, according to the CDC. Hmmm...

[TheLion]

The title says "not as scary as flu" then the end of the article says it has a much higher mortality rate. I also read somewhere else that they think it doubles every 2 weeks.

Someone needs to figure this out quick. Saw the guy on Fox mention it as really scary. That will needlessly scare a lot of people. We need the facts sorted out.

[hove]

This is one of the most stupid articles posted on FR! I wonder if the author knows how many people died from HIV/AIDS.........in 1980?? I'm sure it wasn't near as bad as the flu.

[blam]

This guy thinks SARS and the war will cause a world wide recession

Economist Predicts World Recession

[etcetera]

"And both were born in China. Influenza begins as an infection of birds..."

If the world medical community understands where and how these diseases start, wouldn't it be prudent and cheaper to clean up the SOURCE? If all the money spent on the flu every year were to be expended in cleaning up this farming mess, wouldn't it be better for all people in the long run?

[IvanT]

Where are the SARS survivors?

Up here in Canada, we've already had 20 completely recover -they're feeling better and will be released from quarantine in the appropriate amount of time. So it is beatable. They're administering a cocktail of drugs up here that seems to be working.