[Judith Anne]

Every organization has strengths and weaknesses. Glad to hear you are doing well...my concern is that SARS will expose all the weaknesses.

[DoughtyOne]

If SARS does break out in the US this fall, I agree that it will expose a myriad of evils. We've played fast and lose with our health care system. Perhaps this is what it will take for us to take health care seriously.

Hillary's, and other people's idea that medical centers and other health providers could simple eat the costs of health care, were ill advised. No business can operate at a loss or a very slim margin forever.

Thanks for the discussion.

[Movemout]

...my concern is that SARS will expose all the weaknesses.

A reasonable cocern, but I would stipulate that it is nearly impossible to maintain a position that would be able to absorb the effects of any pandemic. The O&M costs would be staggering. I am not saying that we shouldn't take reasonable steps which would allow us to move to a full up defensive posture more rapidly if this SARS turns out to be more deadly in the second round as was the Spanish Lady.

I have followed all of the SARS threads (or most of them). I dropped off posting early on in the SARS discussions because the uninformed naysayers were getting on my nerves. I note that you have hung in there from nearly the beginning. Kudos to you.

The latest round of speculation in the press is that we have paid too much attention to SARS to the detriment of more menacing problems, the latest being the West Nile problem. I guess some folks think everything is a zero sum game. The concept of parrallel processsing and dynamic response is totally foreign to their pea pickin' intellects.