From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Thu Apr 24 2003 - 16:40:33 MDT
On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 11:50:32AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Now, on the TV this morning I heard comments to the effect that most of
> the people who have died are either elderly or otherwise immunocompromised.
> This only makes sense and implies that most people do not really need
> to be fearful (as Anders points out).
This is not the impression I have. Look at the latest case counts from
WHO: http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_04_24/en/. In Canada and Hong
Kong, the ratio of death to recovery is about 1:5. In China it's 1:10 but
that could easily be due to bad reporting. For comparison, the fatality
rate of smallpox is 30%.
> Its always important to keep in mind influenza kills (to my best very
> rough guess) around 600,000 people a year [1] while SARS if it continues
> at its present rate will only kill perhaps 500 people this year.
Influenza has a much lower fatality rate than SARS. The 1918-1919
influenza pandemic had a fatality rate of less than 1%. Also remember that
the current fatality rate of SARS assumes intensive medical care. It will
surely be much higher if the virus spreads into underdeveloped regions or
if the epidemic overwhelms health care systems.
"This is a disease that is now probably endemic in China. It's definitely
an epidemic in Hong Kong, as it is in Toronto," said Donald Low of Mount
Sinai Hospital in Toronto. "Patients will carry it to other countries and
introduce it into new countries. Some of those countries will be able to
respond adequately and other countries won't have the resources or
expertise. It's bleak. It really is bleak."
(http://www.charleston.net/stories/042203/wor_22sars.shtml)
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