Toronto a SARS wasteland
Out of context: Reply #48
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- monokrom0
"Only ___ people have died! Why da media gotta overblow the situation?!?!"
If the death toll blows up, will you be satisfied?
My gf's fam lives in HK. In one apartment block (google for "Amoy Gardens" if you like), majorities of people living on entire floors were infected, with hundreds of infections in that building alone ... just because someone with SARS (at the time, undiagnosed) stopped by to visit someone living in the building and used the toilet.
Keep telling yourselves that only weak senior citizens or little kid are vulnerable - meanwhile, hundreds of young, vigorous, healthy people are lying in hospital beds in China.
The death rate so far is still under 6%. Sounds not so bad, until I remember a researcher from the CDC telling an interviewer yesterday that SARS seems like something that's "here to stay".
6% mortality of the entire US over a relatively short period (matter of months or even a couple of years - how soon will they have a useful vaccine for a bug that is continually mutating as SARS seems to be ?) would be a very serious matter.
So far, we've been lucky.
China, HK, etc. seem to be dealing with a harsher, more easily communicable strain of the SARS virus.
People are still travelling to and from the Far East, though. Who's to say that some of them won't bring back a more virulent strain of the SARS bug?
Where did SARS come from originally? Somewhere in Guangdong province. Did it cross over from an animal? No one really knows yet. Produce and other perishables are still moving back and forth from Asia to the rest of the world.
We're in a scary time here.
In a year, this could all have blown over, but, then again, maybe not.
I'm not predicting the collapse of civilization, tumbleweeds and discarded newspapers blowing down empty streets, or national guard troops in HAZMAT suits driving flatbed trucks down your street screaming "bring out your dead!" over a loudspeaker.
I would, however, avoid travelling to places like Toronto for now.
Yeah the mayor of Toronto is an idiot.