No SARS testing at U.S. airports

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | By Paul Sperry

[unspun]

Just because we can't stop it, it doesn't mean that we can't mitigate the number of people affected by it. Suppose one of those people we can keep SARS from spreading to were your grandmother, or your baby.

[dljordan]

Gee, what makes you think the Gubmint wants a crisis? I'll probably get flamed for saying this but if the Feds wanted this stopped they would do it. Sars doesn't seem to be very deadly but maybe this is just to condition the sheeple. Of course the "Good Germans" among us refuse to believe there's anything behind the curtain and violently lash out at anyone that points to such things. The thing that galls me is that the Feds and there minions in the state and local governments are throwing this right in our faces and daring us to make a connection or say anything about it.

Waiting quietly for my rebuke.

[discostu]

What I'm saying is I don't think we can even mitigate it, at this juncture the best we can do is lie to ourselves and pretend we're actually doing something. Those kind of measure are usually expensive and always pointless.

[unspun]

I see not reason to let coughing, hacking people into the country, from east Asia right now.

[EternalHope]

Maybe this will be a civilization ending thing, or maybe it'll be a Trivial Pursuit question in the 2010 edition. And boy will we ever feel silly if it turns out to be the later and we act like it's the former.

Of course, it may be the later only because we acted like it was the former.

Which gets back to the fundamental question: How should we respond at this stage?

Since SARS clearly has the potential to be a worldwide plague, we should respond with aggressive efforts to contain it. If it turns out to have been a false alarm, so what? When the downside is a worldwide plague that could kill many million people, it is truly better to err on the side of caution.

My personal hope is that six months from now people look back on SARS as just another "flu", with no major impact on the world. I would be delighted to have "BonesMccoy" berating me for my concern about what he "knew" all along was nothing to worry about. At this point, however, it could go either way.

[discostu]

I see no reason to treat every Asian smoker like a plague carrier. We have to remember that people don't spend very long in customs, it's not going to be easy spotting the sick people.

[discostu]

I'm not sure SARS has the potential for a worldwide plague, at least no more than most nasty flus. I think the appropriate reaction at this point is wait and see. So far the only places it's spreading really fast are densely packed poorly sanitized cities, kind of a no brainer. It's got a fairly high fatality rate but it's not astronomical. Let the CDC guys do their work and keep an eye on it. Maybe I'm just hyper cynical because of the annual "worst flu ever" stories, but I'm just not getting scared about SARS.

[unspun]

How about disposable thermometers, for likely cases? Costs less than hospitalization.

[discostu]

But we're still hinging on defining likely cases. Given a 5 to 10 minute window of observation how do you tell the difference between somebody with allergies, somebody who smokes too much, and somebody with SARS? Or do we just examine everybody that displays any cold or flu symptoms while in line? Then there's the reverse, even the nastiest of illnesses will give you brief respites, so any SARS victims that manage to be symptom free for a few minutes will walk away. It's easy to say disposable termometers for likely cases, but much more difficult to determine what a likely case is.

[unspun]

Then there's the option of just banning people from certain nations for a time. There are options.

[discostu]

We can't even manage to ban people from terrorist countries so that's not gonna happen. There really aren't options. If this is the next big plague then it's going to kick ass and kill millions and go away in a few years, if it's not then it won't.

[freeeee]

We can't even manage to ban people from terrorist countries so that's not gonna happen.

Here, let me fix that:

We Our public servants can't even manage refuse to ban people from terrorist countries so that's not gonna happen.

There really aren't options.

Sure there are. There are several of them listed on every ballot come election day. We simply tell our public servants that their services are no longer required. You gotta speak the only language they understand: power.

[unspun]

So, you're telling me that the freedom of diseases is a libertarian cause, as well as the freedom to abuse drugs?

[aristeides]

At t he hearing yesterday Dr. Fauci said that, if we're lucky, we may have a vaccine in a year. That's another reason to want to buy time.

[discostu]

Last I heard they still worked for us. If there was a hugh and cry they'd do it, but there isn't so they won't.

As for your final paragraph, let's stay on topic. Unless you know of some ballot measure coming up to cure SARS, ni which case please elucidate.

[discostu]

No. As a matter of fact I have no idea how you would even think that from what I wrote. I'm simply pointing out that all of the "plans" for how to deal with SARS are expensive and doomed to be ineffective.

[discostu]

They've been saying that if we're lucky we'll have a vaccine for AIDS in a year... been saying it for over a dozen years. Apparently we're not very lucky. Or the people that make those predictions are idiots who shouldn't be trusted to give the time of day. Take your pick.

[unspun]

And I'm saying that "ineffective" isn't ineffective if you happen to be one who didn't catch the bug on September 29, 2003, or the guy he would have caught it from on October 3, because of care taken by the Feds (even though it wouldn't make a difference to some other poor guy). Epidemeology is a numbers game, among other things, is it not?

If this turns out to be a case of sniffles and a light fever, that's one thing, but a hazard to the lives of the infirm, elderly, and youth is a problem.

[discostu]

And you're wrong. I've asked numerous questions on how this could be accomplished and the best you can answer is that it might maybe somehow possibly save one persons's life. Bulldadda. Give a straight answer to the questions:
How do we know who is a "likely candidate"?
How will we quarantine them?
How long will they be quarantined?
How will we determine they actually have SARS?

Unless you can answer those questions any "plan" you come up with is a feel good measure doomed to be 100% innefective across the board. Yes epidemeology is a numbers game, and grabbing random people with the sniffles will waste a lot of numbers and accomplish ZERO.

[blam]

New SARS Outbreak Sparks 'Typhoid Mary' Fears