Posted on 04/19/2003 8:37:26 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:02:25 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Easter religious services have featured prayers for an end to the outbreak.
1) having had close contact with a person who is a suspect or probable case of SARS.
Probable case:
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
SARS FACTS
Suspect case: A person who develops high fever (greater than 38 C / 100.4 F) and respiratory symptoms such as cough, breathing difficulty or shortness of breath, within 10 days of
1) having had close contact with a person who is a suspect or probable case of SARS.
or
2) having traveled to or resided in an affected area.
Probable case: A suspect case with chest X-ray findings of pneumonia or respiratory distress syndrome.
Um...............given that this is the first modern science has seen of this disease, it's pretty safe to say that every individual death brings the the total to a "new high"
Sloppy.
Well - they *certainly* weren't going to reverse!!!
What matters is the trend week to week ...
How many permutations on a virus do you suppose MOTHER NATURE comes up with on her own out there in the 'backwoods' of China where man, animal, chicken, pig, etc, exist in *close* proximity under less than ideal sanitary conditions?
A bunch of others are wondering that also. The Chinese government has been under strong critisism for trying to hide SARS patients, even to the ridiculous length of driving dozens around in ambulances while WHO officials were inspecting the hospitals. That attempted coverup is very suspicious as regarding a possible Chinese bio-leak, but on the other hand, communist regimes are infamous for trying to cover up disasters, and a naturally arising epidemic might be another example of trying to make everything look nice.
I forgot - we live in a disease-free world ...
VERY few diseases have reached the 'panic' level in our press as quickly as SARS has - yet there are diseases that have killed as many people (although over a little longer time period) even relatively recently - - even the plague is still with us -
- from:
The World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER)
17 April 2003, Vol78, 16 (pp129-136)
Human plague in 2000 and 2001
The total number of human plague cases reported to WHO in 2000 by 11 countries was 2513, of which 232 were fatal.
In 2001, 12 countries reported 2671 cases including 175 deaths.
These figures are comparable with the annual average figures (2821 cases, 198 deaths) for the previous 10 years (1990ñ1999), when 28 207 plague cases with 1978 deaths were reported from 24 countries. During this past decade, 80.3% of cases and 83.9% of deaths were reported from Africa.
In 2000 and 2001, global case-fatality rates (CFRs) were 9.2% and 6.6% respectively, as compared with 8.5% in 1998 and 8.1% in 1999, and an average of 7.0% per year in the previous decade (1990ñ1999).
He chronicals plagues throughout recorded history, and the list from China alone is amazing.
It seems to have - for Hong Kong and even Guangdong province ...
SURE it can be and is meaningful - IF a random selection are 'culled' from the group - or a process excludes a certain random (BASED on no criteria which otherwise skew the result) part of the population from consideration in the first place.
It's called 'sampling' and it's done all the time in a multitude of fields from semiconductors testing to medicine ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.