Replies

Hi gang - first post.

Okay so there is no love lost between the Russians and the Chinese. The Russians are a propoganda machine ... we have to take their rumor baiting with a grain of salt. I do have a concern about the "4% mortality rate". I can not find a believable reference to this number. The CDC SARS site contains total known cases and total deaths. If you divide deaths by cases you get about 4% but that doesn't cut it for me.

The total number of deaths divided by the cumulative total number of cases does not account for the fact that many of these cases have not yet had time to die. I have two open questions for the world. 1) Does anybody have a reference to scientifically valid and reliable estimates of the mortality rate for this thing? and/or 2) does my thinking simply reflect ignorance of the topic?

Think about it. If it usually takes a week or two to die after showing symptoms and the vast majority of cases have shown up only in the past week then ... the deaths reported thus far are old news. I would think the mortality rate might be more accurately calculated as number of dead people divided by total number of people known to have recovered completely. Any thoughts?