[JasonC]

The only thing that can help their reputation is beating it disease, and if it is not beaten no amount of spin or of marginal economic actions over the next 6 months will have any bearing on either their economy or their reputation.

Hong Kong style panic got the virsus less than linear in less than a month. That will contain its immediate effect there to some economic disruption and a few score deaths.

The overall epidemic is capable of doubling in size every 20 days. Meaning it will either be contained, or will infect millions, and likely kill hundreds of thousands, within 6 months. A year from now nobody will give a tuppenny damn about Hong Kong hotels if millions are dying from a Chinese plague. A year from now nobody will care about SARs if it goes less than linear next month, and so tops out at a few hundred deaths worldwide.

Beating the damn critter is the only policy issue that matters. The enemy is not press, or spin, or reactions, or hype, or funding, or my pet theory vs. yours or anybody else's. The enemy is the damn bug.

[_Jim]

Hong Kong style panic ...

Oh PLEASE - pure panic does not allow for rationality in the decisions to isolate, treat and track those who may have contracted as insidious (YES, insidious) disease such as SARS.

Tell me - do YOU do *your* best work in a panic-state?

[sarasmom]

The most devestating health problem I have personnally experienced was a bout of viral menningitus.
The horror of the illness was bad enough, the knowledge that I can contract it again, strikes terror in my heart.
No one knew how I caught it, and no one knows how I can avoid future recurrances.
The pain and suffering is indescribable.
How do they describe the pain from SARS in the medical community? How does a survivor describe it?