SARS - Threat or Menace .......

[CaptnKirk]

Well what is it ?
It seems to have Originated in Asia, China perhaps - which because of topography, culture and climate has been the birth place of many viruses in the past.
Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, A Ded Dong Flu - you name it it's an exotic oriental flavor.

Never heard of the Brooklyn, Cleveland, Denver Influenza, maybe the Tiajuana Flu with trots once or twice, but usually of Asian ancestory.

Except for 1918. Spanish Flu or Swine Flu, usually considered one and the same.
World War I Vets returning and bringing with them a particulary bad pandemic. And it is suspected of being Chinese too.

10% of the U.S. population lost - scratchy throat & cough on day one, weak and wobbly on day two, dirt nap on day 4.
17,000 a week died in some Eastern cities, over 600,000 for the U.S. alone. World toll may have been over 30 million.
And the world population as well as our countries population wasn't nearly as large as now.
This appears to have been a mutation of the strain into an even more viriluent variety as treatments were tried.

Now we see the SARS strain, originating at the time expected - our Thanksgiving season, from the same Cradle of Incubation.
It is apparently confirmed that it has in fact mutated into a variety that causes a relapse, and has been particularly bad in China.
It was traced back to a particular hotel and a temporal envelope - that's a time frame - and from there has spread.

Philosophical questions arise - could this strain be a result of bacteriaphobia, where the blatent use of antiseptic agents on
nearly everything forced a mutation, Darwins therory of evolution - product of the environment, only the strong survive - says it could.

Could it be a Hollywood worst case senario with Dustin Hoffman actually be happening before our eyes?
A lab experiment gone wild, accidentially released by someone that visited a bio-lab, and tracked it out on their shoes?

Even a terrorist attack is a possibility. Back in the happening 50's & 60's the U.S. Biolabs in San Franciso repeatedly
released bio-agents just to see what they would do and who got sick. Even fed people LSD just to watch them freak.

The 'Aledged' threat of Anthrax and Smallpox was played to hysteria for political manipulation.
You are more likely to get Anthrax by petting a sheep than opening an envelope, unless you are named Daschle.
This country grew up with Smallpox until it was erradicated, George Washington had had it, didn't kill him just made him ugly.
Killed quite a few way way back, disfigured many, but vaccination and medication ended it.

AIDS is nearly always a death sentence, sometimes quickly, sometimes over a very long time, and sometimes
it dosen't seem to effect a very selecy few. Individual body chemistry and only with one of the 3 different mutations perhaps.

What I consider to be a big threat, as far as a pandemic goes, would be a mutant strain of Ebola breaking out of Africa -
having a long incubation period prior to symtoms appearing, with a long time of contagiousness prior to symtom display.
In that situation the most dangerous method of transmission would be public transportation, confines of air travel.

Nature is the biggest threat to have weapons of mass destruction.

What will we do ? Ignore it like Reagan did with HIV, when it could have been arrested?
Or attack it with the vengance we used on Iraq. Can it provide oil ?

 

[cpumaster]

I heard SARS is actually Saddam's biological WMD plot to attack US, released in China because of their lax border security and spread to US and the rest of the world...
of course it could also Bush plot to weaken China economy so he could blame the bad economy on China...
well, just use your imagination boys

 

[etech]

CaptnKirk

Tell me more about the LSD experiments. from your post it seems that you must have been one of the participants and have some first hand knowledge.

 

[CaptnKirk]

That is a rather ignorant thing to say isn't it Etech ?

I was in the service at the time, and went to 'Nam - probably something I gather that you didn't participate in -
from reading your mindless crap.

Maybe you need This Link to give you a little subtle background.

There were several well documented studies where people were given drugs - without their knowledge, and they were
watched, and only through the Freedom of Information Act were their families able to discover that they had been effectivly murdered
by CIA clandestine experiments. I'm sure if you searched the internet you could find some of this information out for yourself.

Have you ever heard of the Presidio in San Francisco ? It was an Army complex, from where agents
were dispached for travel to cities and airports, carring suitcases or breifcases that contained a spray applicator to 'Mark' civilians
with biological agents, so illness trends could be ascertained and regional outbreaks of that specific bio-agent studied for use in determining how disease could be spread as a weaponized method.
Typical Military Experiments

Do you honestly not think that the Anthrax attacks that coincided with the days immediately after 9-11 could not have been another
of our Military directed experiments ? - After all, the culture strain was proven to be an extract from a U.S. Army Warware lab.

*Note - I tried to NOT use what I considered to be the 'Conspiracy - Alarmist' type links, although some inadvertantly, may be.
Most are from 'Official' Government sites and sources.

EDIT - Looking for BBDoc's input on this, he seems to be the most knowledgable about medical issues.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

I won't limit my comments to SARS just the principles exemplified by its emergence.

1) Global village: Earth isn't a cruise ship that you can hop off when a surprising number of people fall ill. Diseases respect borders and national sovereignty even less than the Bush administration.

2) Prevention is achievable, treatment is profitable, but cure is a pipe dream: Infectious disease is the #1 cause of death worldwide. We have no better tools in the armamentarium than vaccines and clean water supplies. Curiously many US/multinational drug companies are discontinuing vaccine production but have a new antibiotic every quarter.

3) Facts and fear rarely coincide: SARS is a persistent problem in China b/c China is ruled by control-freaks. SARS is a persistent problem in HK b/c the Chinese rule HK (and it is densely populated). Almost every other country has quickly controlled local transmission once index cases were identified.

20-25K people died in the US this flu season . . . few of those people were vaccinated even though the vaccine is widely available (usually) and has insignificant morbidity. But under current administration emphasis . . . smallpox vaccination has become the cause celebre . . . despite NO smallpox cases in two decades and a vaccine with significant morbidity AND mortality.

4) SARS unlikely to be engineered but not impossible: It was relatively easy to sequence b/c viruses are not particularly complex BUT the rapid rate of mutation means a virus engineered to be virulent and relatively long lasting in the environment could quickly become indolent (due to mutation), ineffective agent of war (incapicitates host so it wouldn't be easily spread EXCEPT in hospitals), more susceptible to environment (due to mutation). Regardless, a good hospital has negative pressure rooms and the best (sometimes) infection control protocols. The only countries susceptible to such an agent would be developing ones . . . unless of course you are suggesting the US government did this ala Outbreak.

5) Nature isn't a threat; living out of balance with nature is the threat: Physicians have done a tremendous job in the US curtailing inappropriate antibiotic use over the past decade. We are by no means perfect and our European counterparts typically perform better but progress is progress. Every inch of the planet isn't meant for human presence . . . even if we are just drilling for oil or mining gold . . . and certainly not building human habitats. The sooner we acknowledge we are a part of nature instead of trying to conquer it . . . the easier it will be to get along with all the fauna inhabiting the planet.

6) Reagan's response to HIV is a derivation of #3 . . . the only failure worse than hiding a problem is denying there's a problem.

7) The US military has performed questionable experimentation on troops and the civilian population under the auspices of preparing for an enemy attack using biological/chemical weapons. Including the aerial release of serratia marcescens in SF, Detroit, and I believe at least one other city. At the time serratia marcescens was considered an innocuous bacterium with no potential as a human pathogen. We know better now but that's part of the reason why playing with biological agents is a fool's game . . . kinda makes you wonder why Bush didn't sign the last Biological Convention. His excuse was the treaty had flaws in verification.