Canada fears third wave of SARS

Boston Globe Online ^ | June 10, 2003 | Colin Nickerson

[Judith Anne]

MONTREAL -- Weary Canadian public health doctors sought yesterday to determine whether a new outbreak of SARS has erupted in greater Toronto, where 33 people have died of the flulike virus and the medical system in the country's biggest metropolis is straining under the burden of the disease.

[Domestic Church]

"compare current death rates for influenza and pneumonia to previous death rates?"

I don't know but I'm glad you thought of that!

[Beck_isright]

I've got no idea, to be honest.

[flutters]

Thanks for the link. I looked at it, but it looked greek to me...I wasn't sure where to start. I'll try to find some information this evening.

[Logical Extinction]

They often refer to the 20th century as the century of war...I firmly believe the 21st century will be refered to as the century of disease. Humans and animals are to densly populated and the interconnectedness of all of us leads to rapid spread of any pathogen. Our antibiotics are next to useless and most of the world is either corpulent or starving, not to mention the level of promiscuity and natural desire of governments to hide actual information. What do you expect?

The End Of The Beginning

The Times

It was deep into the Last Days when the messages began to appear upon the Net.

The virus was raging in Africa, exploding in Asia, and had already killed more Americans than the Vietnam and Korean War combined. There were an estimated 16,000 new infections a day, but no one knew the real numbers.

The virus was sweeping through the human species like wildfire. HIV had broken out of Africa and could now be found in every major population. It was within this cauldron of woe that the messages first appeared.

The Internet, at that time, was largely a toy for the bored and lonely. But those were not innocent days. Beneath the mundane ran a tremor of something dark. Erotica, which had driven the first cyberspace expansion, turned more profane, more degrading and raw.

Discussion nodes on the Net filled with anger and derision. Shadows of dark mixed with the light - the Matrix was both the Changer and the Changed.

The First Message

The first message was written in the language of math. A new math that was barely as old as the Internet itself. It was the math of Chaos - the study of rhythms.

The math of Chaos is rooted in epiphany. A young wunderkind named Mitchell Feigenbaum, while playing with a cheap calculator, sensed something in the the seemingly random flow of numbers.

He looked into the very core of our universe, saw something beautiful and changed the world. What Mr. Feigenbaum discovered was an undercurrent of rhythms. Rhythms in the Chaos. Rhythms that were not only mathematically pure, but that appeared to permeate every aspect of physical existence.

It was as though he had discovered the fingerprints of God. He saw that Chaos was filled with perfect rhythms - too complex for mortal perception.

Perhaps the most startling of these rhythms was the discovery that all orderly systems disintegrate into Chaos in exactly the same way. The locust in Africa - the oil flowing smoothly in a Siberian pipeline - and the drip of water from the tap, all change from order to disorder in exactly the same beautiful dance of math. The rhythm is so precise that it is expressed in a number (4.669) carried to four decimal places. Fittingly it is called the Feigenbaum Constant.

Other rhythms have acquired similar names. One, which describes a complex dynamic system, is called the Strange Attractor.

While the language of chaos is often oblique, the first message described an ancient rhythm, correctly identified it as a Strange Attractor, and listed several universal criteria with remarkable clarity.

Words deeply rooted in the truth have a special kind of power. The whole of their influence extends beyond the thoughts expressed. Thus it was with the first message. It was called Futures.

[Logical Extinction]

I am sorry it has taken so long to respond to your post.

As per our discussion on the algebra of transmission:

As recent cases have illustrated, the value for T is where the math gets funny.

Typically, there is a period T (the transmittable interval) of a day to several days during which an infected person can give a virus to another person. What value do we assign to T in the case of SARS?

N(t) ~ (TN₀/g_r ) exp( g_rt ) ,

g_r = (p_tn_h - 1)/ T

I do not know, and I do not trust the calculations of others who claim they do.

Regards

[Marie]

Would you mind "pinging" me if you get an answer to that question? I'd be very interested to know.

[Dec31,1999]

But within days, new SARS cases were reported among patients and in hospitals in Toronto thought to be free of the infection.

So did they then stop people from thoses places from coming into their country? NO!

Mistake number 1.

[flutters]

According to the CDC it looks like it went down:
Proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza
2002 – 2003 6.3%.
2001 – 2002 6.5%.
2000 – 2001 6.8%.
1999 – 2000 6.6%.


1999 - Pneumonia/Influenza: 63,730 deaths
2000 - Pneumonia/Influenza: 65,313 deaths
2001 - Pneumonia/Influenza: 62,123 deaths