So whats the deal with SARS?

Hobbes

So I'm dying with a sore throat for over the last week and saw a doc over it (RTI).

Didn't think it was SARS as I didn't have any of the symptoms but funny to watch people move away while I'm coughing in the Docs waiting room (I was sitting beside a SARS poster).

Then a taxi I got recently the driver is giving me funny looks while I'm coughing my lungs out in the car. I tell him it's not SARS so don't worry, joking and he has a nervous laugh and tells me he picked up two people from Hong Kong (from the airport). One of them was coughing (not as badly as me) but he asked if they were stopped and they said they weren't?

So I was just wondering, are we actually checking for SARS at the airport?

Victor

SARS (not SAR's) is flu-like, not common cold-like.

Hobbes

Originally posted by Victor
SARS (not SAR's) is flu-like, not common cold-like.

I don't have a cold (nor do I mention a cold or flu at any time?), I have RTI (not to be confused with Reproductive Tract Infection).

Now where is that 'Grammer Nazi' card?

Captain Trips

I don't think the checks are like they are in Toronto and SARS hit places. That said I think mostly SARS is bollocks. There are tens of types of pneumonia that kill you more easily.

Smells of media hyping it up TBH. Coronavirus has been known for ages. Maybe it's a conspiracy to see how people react to when the Big One hits! ooer!

Hobbes

Except that the figures are 1 in 5 will die from it and I think over 50 it's a 1 in 2 chance. Also I doubt China would impose a death sentance/life imprisonment for anyone trying to avoid quarantine unless it was serious.

Btw, can someone explain the logic about the special olympics? The certain countries aren't allowed come (sans Canada from the list) but there is nothing to stop them from flying into Ireland normally?

Captain Trips

Hobbes, the second bit is dead on. A guy from some special olympic committee was on Today FM put a very good argument forward that businessmen, etc,. have little or no restrction (or normal travellers), but that the olympians who volunteered to go through 2 week quarantines and such are banned - even though apparently they will be the ones who would have had the most stringent disease control stuff effected upon.

So Johnny from China can hop on the plane and come here on holidays but the crowd who succesfully passed the quarantien period can't. It's madness.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

mike65

Originally posted by daveirl
What do people want?

Consistency!

Mike.

Captain Trips

daveirl, I was saying that maybe it would be better if they had a blanket method on dealing with it as opposed to dealing with the most public of issues (the SO people).

As a sidenote, I knew this sounded familiar, and looked over my old Time magazine collection. October 10, 1994: India has the plague (Yersinia Pestis - far more prevalent than coronavirus). 2500 people infected and 50 dead. There was no global media-instilled fear epidemic from this mysterious kill pneumonia. Except there's nothing mysterious about it.

You have a better chance of dying from hospital acquired pneumonia if you are over 50 than you do from SARS. It's sare mongering and it's the world we live in these days.

So a good few people are dying in piss poor countries from a penumonia. Nothing new there. The deaths in the west are far less. They also have to deal with Hantavirus, West Nile, whatever. Those poor countries always will have high death rates. A single death from L. Pneumophilia in Ireland - just like the single figure deaths in from SARS in SARS affected western countries. Yet still it got headlines (the Legionella case).

Next up: 3000 killed every day in the same piss poor countries by malaria - eh like where's my remote control this is old news.

Executive Steve

and sure the name is a dead giveaway anyway... i mean...
severe and
acute mean the same thing right?
respiratory - fair enough
syndrome? - more of an epidemic

so.... in that case call it
acute respiratory syndrome epidemic

a.r.s.e