Posted on 04/28/2003 3:12:22 PM PDT by CathyRyan
SARS apparently might also be transmitted through touching surfaces on which the virus has settled via sneeze droplets or touch by an infected person. These surfaces could include door knobs, benches, train straps, gas pumps, credit cards, shopping bags, elevator buttons, banisters, counter tops, etc. If the virus can live for 24 hours on such surfaces, the risk of such transmission is not minimal if SARS is rampant in the population around you.
If SARS becomes bad in my area, I'll wear a mask when I go out to prevent unconscious contact of my hands with my mouth and nose.
We will beat this. Bio tech companies are probably chomping at the bit to get samples of the virus to work with. Innovation, creativity, brilliance, vision and, yes, greed will save the day.
I just am not sure how many will die in the meantime.
It's not being spread anymore in Viet Nam, so all the victims must have been isolated. Singapore's numbers have dropped dramatically, and might well match Toronto's very soon. Toronto is out of danger, unless you're a health care worker.
Hong Kong has made a lot of progress, and they may be getting control of it, too.
A big city, with modern medicine and strict health controls can contain this thing, with relatively few people inconvenienced or endangered.
A few new suspect and confirmed cases are popping up around the world, notably in India, but everyone is on watch for it. Those are very encouraging things.
China is a completely different matter, and if it weren't for them, this story would be rapidly beginning to fade from the front pages. They've allowed SARS to escape from the cities where they could handle it, and now it's almost certainly everywhere. Given the incubation period, we probably won't know for another week, and that's assuming we get accurate and timely information.
Without the level of healthcare in rural China that residents on the coast can get, it's likely to be a very serious problem.
The rural Chinese aren't too likely to get onto any planes flying into your hometown anytime soon, so even if it gets pretty bad there, it's probably not much immediate threat to us.
But they can bring it back into Hong Kong and Beijing and Shanghai at a later time, so even if a city can contain it today, it might come back from an outside source later.
Recovered SARS Patient Continues to Shed Virus in Stool --------------------------------------------------- An issue that has not been discussed anywhere in ProMED-mail in detail (perhaps because little is known about it) is that of continual viral shedding by clinically recovered SARS patients. A colleague of mine in Singapore, who has had the SARS illness and was diagnosed with the SARS coronavirus by RT-PCR culture and electron microscopy, has informed me that SARS coronavirus RNA has continued to be detected in stool samples by RT-PCR, although it has not yet been successfully grown in culture. This continued for sometime after the quarantine period of 10-14 [days?] after recovery from illness (up to 3 weeks post-recovery). If such is the case for most -- or even some -- of the recovered SARS patients, perhaps this may account for the ongoing transmission we are seeing in places like Singapore in household and workplace contacts of clinically recovered SARS patients. Perhaps the laboratories of the WHO collaborating network should ask for convalescent stool samples as well as sera to monitor and characterise this phenomenon.
[The current RT-PCR tests utilize primers that amplify short sequences of the polymerase gene of the putative SARS coronavirus. These tests may do no more than detect the presence of defective virus in gut contents. The replication of many RNA viruses is accompanied by the progressive accumulation of defective interfering particles (the equivalent of deletion mutants), which are thought to be a determining factor in the self-limiting characteristics of some acute virus infections. The failure to isolate infectious virus from the patient after recovery suggests that transmission of SARS via gut contents post-recovery does not represent substantial risk. Nonetheless, it is not possible to discount this route of transmission of SARS virus without knowledge of the relative sensitivity of the cell culture employed, and Dr. Julian Tang has drawn attention to an important question. - Mod.CP]
http://www.promedmail.org/pls/askus/f?p=2400:1001:102727813954567900::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_PUB_MAIL_ID:1000,21428
"Billions will die from this mighty retribution. Kneel down and repent, sinners, for the hour of judgement is at hand. He shall come from a sweaty, unhygenic place, and know that his name be SARS!"
"This MUST be a bioweapon created by the NWO, and spread by black helicopters, to help cause a panic that will let the government start the gun grabs. I'll be in my Y2K shelter if you need me."
"Dude, it'll be just like, you know, The Stand. Won't that be freaky?!?All that death and stuff? I should buy a white mask and gloves, like, you know Micheal Jackson. Who knew he was right all this time, about the germs, and stuff?" </The Stand>
Maybe it's the number of viruses a person comes into contact with that makes the difference, and infection from recovered patients' stools is relatively low.
The interesting thing is that recovery isn't dependent on elimination of the virus. It has to be based upon sufficient antibodies being developed, or some other protective measure.
Or maybe the fact that these shed viruses haven't been successfully grown in culture yet is an indication that they've been somehow neutralized genetically. Just guessing here.
Seriously, I broke my addiction to FR for a whole month there but this stuff brings me back.
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.