Study offers first picture of effects of SARS

CTV.ca ^ | May 28, 2003 | CTV.ca News Staff

[Domestic Church]

"Can you imagine some Toronto Teen, cruising the mall"

Picture about 500 incubating teens...

[Domestic Church]

"...there was an article in April that talked about someone contracting sars from someone before that person shows symptons."

There were several instances (someone traveling in supposed good health from Toronto to Australia and then infecting their parents rings a bell) in several articles that implicated incubation as being a contagious period. The entire situation in China fits this. Quarantine should be extended for a month after recovery. That entire school should have been quarantined away from their families (barracks?) under a more controlled atmosphere and their families should be watched daily for a month. Also some watchdog agency should start legal saber rattling (class action?) against the authorities in Canada who are remiss in handling this crisis.(Maybe that will snap some US heads.)

[aristeides]

The following paragraph from Sars Reference suggests that, while transmission might be possible during the incubation period, it is much more likely when the symptoms are prominent:

LInfectivity might therefore be variable over time, even during the symptomatic phase of the disease. Indeed, preliminary findings from sequential quantitative RT-PCR analyses of nasopharyngeal aspirates suggest that the viral load might peak at around day 10 after the onset of symptoms and then decrease to the levels obtained on admission at day 15 (Peiris II).

[Domestic Church]

"Plan on going up North and living in a tent in the woods from September of this year to March of next year?"

You will be going closer to Toronto. If SARS is at all airborne, even in short time span (the 24 hours it lives on hard surfaces might be 48 or more in air as nothing has been shown on this aspect yet), you don't want to do that.

Best thing for now is to pester your legislators for immediate action on the borders. The worse it gets in Canada the more Canadians will stream south for medical care and take use of our respirators. We are limited with only an additional 3000 being purchased by the feds and 80% of the respirators in the nation are in use every year with the flu.

[EternalHope]

As far as contagion during the incubation period, my recollection is the same as Cathy's. This is counter to the current "conventional wisdom" prevalent in the popular press that a person is NOT contagious during the incubation period.

Quarantine during a completely non-contagious period is obviously not needed. The standard protocol is to quarantine everyone who has come in contact with a suspected case. Since this would be unnecessary if the person were guaranteed not to be contagious, it follows that the "authorities" have concluded there is at least some chance of contagion during this period. I also suspect the quantity of virus shed is so low that the odds of infection during this time are low.

I suspect the "authorities" believe the public is incapable of making these kinds of distinctions, so the party line is simply that people during these times are not contagious.

Interestingly, the United States does NOT seem to be following the "quarantine everybody" approach that the rest of the world is following. I trust our CDC and our medical system far more than the WHO. Are we making a mistake? There is LOTS of food for thought here.

[aristeides]

Doctor Reveals Origin of SARS Pandemic.

[CathyRyan]

I know I am crazy....I have the cats to prove it but..... I knew I was not that crazy :) Here is the reference I was talking about. You can argue that it is not sound but it was posted. :)

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Posted by CathyRyan to per loin

On News/Activism 04/07/2003 5:23 PM EDT #10 of 11

Disease expert stricken by SARS

The director of infection control at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital is recuperating in that hospital from SARS.

Dr. Allison McGeer, one of Canada's leading infectious disease specialists, contracted the disease from a staff member at the hospital. The health-care worker was not showing symptoms of SARS at the time, but went on to develop the disease.

McGeer, has been in the hospital, in isolation, for the last week, the hospital said Monday.

It was exposure to McGeer that sent the hospital's senior infectious disease expert, Dr. Donald Low, into quarantine in his home early last week.

Low has shown no signs of developing SARS. His period of quarantine was to expire Tuesday morning.

http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=69DDE87E-D7AE-4680-A592-AE2CE1AB3A3C

If this is true...this is not good.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/887259/posts

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SARS patients are free of the virus once the symptoms leave. "SARS is most infectious in the incubation period. Once the symptoms disappear, the virus also goes. This virus is not like HIV, which remains in the body forever," Seth said.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=43811556

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Posted by aristeides to 11th_VA; CathyRyan; Mother Abigail; Dog Gone; Petronski; per loin; riri; flutters; Judith Anne; ...

On News/Activism 05/08/2003 11:03 AM EDT #47 of 50

Dr Heymann and other health officials told the House hearing there was no evidence people transmit the virus before they develop the cough, fever and pneumonia that characterize SARS.

Curious way to express oneself. I wonder why they didn't say that the evidence suggests that there is no such transmission before the symptoms develop.

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/907555/posts

[aristeides]

I think I read some place lately that McGeer has recovered. I wonder if cases caught from mild and undeveloped cases tend also not to be severe.

[CathyRyan]

---

Doing the Rocky Dance at the top of the steps

It took me about four and a half hours to find the one post.

---

[EternalHope]

I think I read some place lately that McGeer has recovered. I wonder if cases caught from mild and undeveloped cases tend also not to be severe.

Sadly, no.

One of the early hopes was that SARS would burn itself out. One sign of this would have been that victims with a mild case only pass on mild cases. However, mild cases have been repeatedly shown to pass on severe cases. There is no sign of weakening even after the virus has passed through 15 generations.

[per loin]

Good memory! I'd forgotten about McGeer.

[CathyRyan]

I read somewhere (OMG LOL) that a milder case can pass on a seiver case.

There was a patient in hospital that recovered and the nurse who treated him died.

There was some talk on some threads that very mild case could pass on a more seiver case. But above is the only example I can remember off hand.

[Dog Gone]

It seems possible to me that infected people who are not yet showing symptoms are indeed contagious, but not at their peak in terms of danger to others.

Someone may not have developed the dry cough that is probably the biggest culprit in spreading the virus, but people who are not ill often cough and sneeze everyday over some minor irritant. These "routine" expulsions of air could very well be laced with the virus, and nobody thinks a thing about it.

[EternalHope]

Study: SARS Virus Can Live for 3 Days on Plastic is directly on point to the "when contagious" issue.

To quote the article ("Hong Kong researchers"):

Many of those who recently caught the disease in the city are believed to have picked it up from other hospital patients before the latter showed obvious SARS symptoms.

[CathyRyan]

But most of the information that the epidemiologists have been able to put together suggests that the period of contagion may begin with the onset of the very earliest symptoms of a viral infection, so our guidance is based on this assumption

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/881127/posts

[blam]

Excerpt: US Disease Center Puzzles Over SARS Transmission

[BartMan1]

Is your point that we should wait for the development of symptoms before quarantining exposed individuals ?

[Prince Charles]

To make life easier in the future, I added the keyword "asymptomatic" to that thread. ;-)

[EternalHope]

Is your point that we should wait for the development of symptoms before quarantining exposed individuals?

Certainly not, although I may have done a poor job explaining my point. I was simply trying to say that people do not need to be quarantined unless they have a reasonable chance of being contagious at the time.

The question was triggered by a discussion about when people become contagious.

The official line is that people are not contagious until they become symptomatic. However, if the "authorities" truly believe people are not contagious until they are symptomatic, then why quarantine people immediately?

My personal opinion is that the "authorities" suspect a person may become contagious before they are symptomatic, but that they are worried about the public reaction if they say so. Hence they are using a quarantine protocol that implies they think you may be contagious before symptoms develop, but telling the public not to worry.

That line of thinking led me to question why the U.S. is following a different quarantine protocol.

[Judith Anne]

Oy!

Good discussion...