Excellent points.
Well there are four primary questions that need answering before we start testing incoming passengers for SARS:
Is there even a SARS test?
Not really. The U.S. CDC can confirm it if you give them two weeks for testing. Various other tests can be done much quicker, but they have a high false negative rate.
How long does the test take? Too long to wait.
What's the incubation period before the test will come up positive? The false negative rate is high.
Where are we going to put these people during the incubation and testing period? Nowhere. If we let them come, we cannot confine them once they are here.
Everybody acts like it's a no-brainer to test for SARS but frankly it's a no-brainer to NOT test.
The only practical test is to screen for obviously sick people. This will not catch all cases, but it could catch enough to slow its spread. It is still thought that the most contagious time is when symptoms are present.
Even if we cannot keep it out, it is worthwhile to buy time. If the extra time we buy allows us to develop a practical and reliable test, for instance, we will be much better able to contain this. Likewise, it is still possible that this will turn out to be seasonal, or will burn itself out. In other words, slowing down the spread is worth doing even if we cannot keep it out in the end.
The obviously ill should be detained, but even then you've got to decide what's obviously ill. I have numerous allergies that tend to flare up in spring time, especially when I change environment (go form inside to outside, vice versa, taking a plane to another city or country would generally count). So there's a good chance were I to be disembarking from a plane that I'd do so with a long series of sneezes and the sacrifice of many kleenix, obviously sick? If you give me 15 to 20 minutes it'll clear... until I leave the airport (obviously I try not to travel this time of year).
If SARS is the next great plague I don't see much we can do about it, plagues traveled well before the plane was invented airport security isn't going to stop one. On the other hand we have to keep in mind that the press just eats this kind of thing up and makes everything seem huge by repeating the same bad news over and over. The Fox crawler this moring said 2300 worldwide sick and 100 dead, the big mid-west heat wave a few summers back killed more people than that. 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.
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.