From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Mon May 12 2003 - 15:42:03 MDT
On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 05:07:32PM -0400, Wei Dai wrote:
> 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.
Let me add that at this point we should be asking why did the WHO, CDC,
and the media play down fatality rate of SARS by using this obviously
flawed estimation method? It was clear to me when I posted a message to
this list on April 24 on the SARS topic that the fatality rate had to be
closer to 20% than 5%, yet everyone accepted and quoted the official
figure without any misgiving. Instead, we saw media "skepticism" in the
*other direction*, playing down the severity of the problem.
I think part of the problem is that local public health authorities and
even the WHO all have incentives to under-report problems. For the local
authorities, the costs of being transparent (decline of tourism and
foreign investments) are local, while the benefits (preventing
transmission to other countries) are global. The WHO doesn't have this
particular problem but it depends on local authorities for data and for
access, and can't afford to antagonize them.
However, I still don't understand why "skepticism" in the private media is
also in the direction of minimizing the problem, or have I just missed
the skeptical articles on the other side? Does anyone remember seeing any
articles before May 7 suggesting that the official fatality rate was too
low?
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