Influenza vs SARS

[lovingboth]

asrana's post has reminded me of something.

SARS has infected about 50 people in the USA, with no deaths so far.

[Poll #130196]

Comments

[-she-devil.livejournal.com]

i've been saying the same thing! the diff is ther eis no cure for SARS, but still so many more pl die from the flu, or there was some think in the paper that you are more likely to die from a severe dog bite that causes extreme blood loss then SARS. now i'm in Toronto and there's a bit of panic here, but really, it's not that bad. and ppl get all upset when i make jokes :(

[adjectivegail]

the difference is not only that there's no cure for SARS, but that because it's a new and emerging disease, no one in the global population has immunity to it - and due to the high mutation rate we don't even know if catching it will result in life-long immunity, or if people could be reinfected. certainly there've been several people discharged from hospital in HK who've then had to go back a week or two later - in some cases appearing to be infected by a different serotype.
the resources that SARS patients require are also significantly higher than 'flu patients. sure, 'flu kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every winter (and at other times), but they don't require the hospital staff to wear special, expensive, protective gear because they've all had the vaccines for it. they don't, generally, need to be put on ventilators, so you don't have the agonizing decision to make as to whether the latest patient should be left to die because there are no more, or if you should turn one of the other people off.
getting back to the immunity thing. ordinary, run-of-the-mill 'flu doesn't have that big an impact on the general population, despite killing lots of them every year. however the 1918-1919 'flu pandemic certainly did have a big impact - essentially it stopped being a pandemic not because it was contained, but because eventually everyone had been infected and was thereafter either immune, or dead. that was a strain of 'flu now known as H1N1 which at the time was so different from all the other kinds of 'flu people had encountered as to be as effective as a new virus.
if SARS follows a simiar pattern to that 1918 pandemic and sweeps through the entire global population (less likely - despite being able to survive for over 24hrs on solid surfaces, it doesn't seem to infect terribly well), it will kill millions and millions of people. H1N1 in 1918 had a mortality rate of 2.5%. SARS has a mortality rate of 16% and rising - i heard a few days ago that it was 18% in Toronto. besides which, if/when it makes its way to Africa where millions of people are immunocompromised with AIDS - well, there might not be such bad famine or starvation in that part of the world for a few years.

yeah, i know, i'm all doom and gloom. i do realise that with all the measures being taken to curtail the spread of SARS, my arguments here will come across to the majority of people as overly dramatic and fatalistic. i don't mean it like that, i just want to point out why a lot of the medical establishment are in a panic about it.

there's been some amounts of talk about all this at microbiology - feel free to drop in :)

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. It seems correct to ask technical questions such as what is the transmission and mortality rate from SARS, whatever the technical terms are, and based on this whether it's a media scare or a genuine emergency. But to argue that it's not an emergency because it's at the bottom left of its exponential graph is silly.

Pavlos

[adjectivegail]

and based on this whether it's a media scare or a genuine emergency.
my personal opinion is that it's both. it's a genuine emergency, not so much for the numbers of people it'll eventually kill (i mean, there'll be lots of them, but to be honest the majority of the world doesn't really care), but the amount of disruption due to quarrantining and the amount of money for all the measures put in place in order to contain it - those are the reasons why it's a genuine emergency. the politicians are economically driven, and this has had a significant impact on Asia's economy - which, since the early 1990's has contributed around 25% each year to growth, globally. in the end, i don't think another episode like the 1918 pandemic will happen - the WHO has had a 'flu team working on contingency plans since before 1997, and they're essentially using this outbreak as a 'dry run' for the next 'flu pandemic (since we're majorly overdue for one, and the chicken 'flu thing is kinda scary).
i think that it's also a media scare, because i don't think they're presenting it the right way - they're concerned with selling papers, not with educating the public, so people don't realise that their individual risk of contracting it is fairly low, but that if the NHS can't cope, our taxes are going to go way up.

But to argue that it's not an emergency because it's at the bottom left of its exponential graph is silly.
YAY you! *picks up and hugs* i like you. i've been getting frustrated with that kind of attitude. thank you :)

Re:

[-she-devil.livejournal.com]

i understand the concern, but there is still excessive panic...

also it's good that you are informed about things that you discuss!!