From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Mon May 12 2003 - 15:07:32 MDT
On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 03:14:45PM -0400, matus@matus1976.com wrote:
> A more recent skeptical look at SARS by columnist Michael Fumento.
Not recent enough, unfortunately.
> How lethal is SARS?
>
> Globally, it's about seven percent, in the same league as other forms of
> pneumonia. This is notwithstanding the May 1 Washington Post reporting that
> WHO official Mark Salter said it was 10 percent. A CNN.com article that day
> was titled: "SARS Death Rate Rising," but it had Salter saying it "could
> likely reach 10 percent." "Could" and "is" are not the same.
On this same day this article is dated, WHO raised estimated SARS fatality
rate to 15% (see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27675-2003May7.html) while
the Lancet published a paper putting SARS fatality rate in Hong Kong at
20%.
It was obvious from common sense that the 7% figure could only be too
low, not too high, since it was derived by dividing the number of people
dead from the total number of SARS cases, ignoring the fact that some of
the existing SARS patients haven't recovered yet. Such an elementary
mistake commited by this columnist makes me doubt the value of reading the
rest of the article.
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