[discostu]

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.

[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.

[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.