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As you say, the "tilt of the conversation" may have led to an impression that your position was more extreme than intended.

I suspect, and hope, that seamole's was also.

Although I changed my first draft, I originally wrote that I felt you both had made valid points, and I thought that the reasonable course lay somewhere in the gray area between the extremes.

I think we are in agreement that, at this point, there is a dearth of significant data on which to extrapolate the real impact this virus will have.

Without additional facts or more data, it is difficult to calm the fears of those who are truly alarmed. Also, without those facts, it is difficult to say their fears are unfounded.

Until many more cases are accurately diagnosed, the true contagion and mortality rates, as well as potential mutation factors and general species resistance factors, will continue to be unknowns.

In my opinion, the fear factor will continue to be an emotional one that, whether the response is apathy or alarm, can't be argued or mitigated with the information currently available.

Unfortunately, as demonstated here, this can cause vehement disagreements between intelligent and compassionate individuals. Similarly, and more distressing, these same disagreements can occur between medical professionals, leading to more fear and anxiety in the general public.

Problem is that the "news" media is always afraid to miss the next big story, so since SARS could arguably turn into the end of the world plague no one dares not cover it, and "cover it" always has an understood "constantly" at the end of the sentence. This of course makes things seem bigger, especially to your hardcore news junky like on FR, people are going to hear about the same three deaths over and over until somebody else dies (same thing happened with the Iraq war, same thing happened in Afghanistan, some thing happened with the shark scare of 2001) and they alway play with the phrasing to try to make it sound like new news so if you're not paying close attention you'll think it's a different 3 death. This creates panic, then even after you learn that it's the same deaths you're still left with the panic (panic, much like liberals, doesn't respond to logic or reason).

I often think one of the worst things to happen to this country was getting 3 24/7 news networks, when there wasn't competition there wasn't such a desperate need to beat a story to death. They have that desperate need to be first, first to spot the story, first to report the story, first to predict what's going to happen, first to spew the latest development, first to everything. And with the internet even the previously calm print media gets into the need to be first. Nobody can afford to take the time to develop a story and get the information right before opening their yap. That's what we have to do, don't panic until the story is developed and we have useful information, and remember if it just got published on the net or announced on TV 5 minutes ago it's probably BS.