Re: "Hysteria, Thy Name is SARS"

From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Mon May 12 2003 - 17:49:04 MDT

  • Next message: Adrian Tymes: "RE: "Hysteria, Thy Name is SARS""

    On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 06:22:46PM -0400, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
    > I don't know why people are so afraid of admitting that we don't know
    > everything.

    Who is afraid of admitting that we don't know everything? Who are you
    talking about?

    > SARS is new. We don't know if it will spread or die out. We
    > don't know if it will be easily cured or immune to all medicines. All these
    > predictions on both extremes are meaningless. They are just guesses made
    > without evidence. Those who say it will become an unstoppable epidemic that
    > will cripple the planet may be right, but there is no evidence for that.
    > Those who say this is a minor bug and won't do as much harm as existing
    > pneumonias or malaria may be right, but there is no evidence of that either.

    Maybe the evidence is not yet conclusive, but there is plenty of evidence.
    It's clear at this point that a moderately well developed public health
    system like Canada's or Vietnam's can contain SARS with a pretty good
    margin of safety. On the other hand we also know that it can be
    transmitted easily when public health measures are lacking and will kill
    15-20% of people that it infects.

    Those of us who are directly or indirectly affected by SARS (I personally
    have relatives in Beijing) have to make decisions based on how serious we
    think it is. Unlike you, we can't just say "I don't know what's going to
    happen, there's no evidence either way."

    > Worse, each side attacks the other as being fear-mongerers or
    > truth-suppressors. Why the vitriol?

    What vitriol? What are you talking about?



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