SARS smells strange

It seems to me this whole SARS thing smells a bit odd. I base this on the fact that I have heard of no outbreak of the flu this flu season. What happened?
The annual flu outbreak usually starts in China. This year we have SARS from China instead.
It could cause one to suspect that SARS may be a "politically correct" name for this year's flu, rather than Hong Kong flu or Asian flu, Peking flu, etc.
Nah.
Still, what happened to the flu?

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no its not

from what i understand the flu is a virus that mutates around

SARS on the otherhand is related to the common cold not the flu virus

 

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No wonder SARS smells strange, latest findings suggest it travels on 4 legs...

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A popular joke is that people in south china eat everything that has 4 legs, except the table....

The inevitable consequence of keeping a large variety of animals close together in cages etc. gives many odd viruses the change to transmutate, using other species as steppingstones to finally be able to penetrate humans. The chinese could better work on "kosher" foodseperation than walk around with feeble mouthprotection IMHO.

 

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There is no SARS

There is no SARS. There is no valid result showing its cause. There are asymptomatic SARS cases, symptomatic SARS cases ... in one case (Amoy Gardens, I believe) a block of flats saw its "SARS" outbreak cease when leaking sewage pipes (that were contaminating the incoming water) were shut down.

You cannot tell the difference between a symptomatic SARS case and the common cold.

You cannot tell the difference between the asymptomatic (e.g. Amoy Gardens) SARS cases and the flu or any number of other infections.

Try the following:

(1) Go to the airport in a van where you can sit for a few minutes; be careful not to rouse "terrorism" suspicions.
(2) At the airport, smoke two grams of marijuana and three cigarettes, drink a Pepsi.
(3) Get out of the van, carry your bags, go through security, and run to the gate.
(4) When you cough up the natural obstructions to breathing (smoke particles, phlegm, and there's this weird effect that soft drinks have on my throat; I can cough up loads of loogey) near the departure gate, people will fear you have SARS. You might even get quarantined, as if looking sketchy in a van while huffing two grams of dope and three cigarettes won't get you arrested first.

Correction: Consider the above. Do not try it. Arrest or quarantine, the result might be unpleasant.

Just maybe.

Perhaps it's time to start seriously considering the conspiracy theories that have to do with restriction of movement. I just don't get what's to be gained from such authoritarianism, but I'm not the authoritarians allegedly involved in a conspiracy ....

People know what to do, generally speaking, if the travel alerts come out that a particularly nasty influenza is tearing through Hong Kong and has turned up on the mainland.

But a "new" and "unidentifiable" and (possibly) fatal disease with mysterious modes of transmission &c., &c. will scare the bejeebus out of people.

Or so says me.

:m:,
Tiassa

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Yeah except for the whole dying part, Tiassa.

 

There is no spoon

 

International travel has increased with international trade and has added to the problem. Air travelers are in close contact with others for long periods of time.

Not only are airline passengers in close contact, recent developements to increase the efficiency of the planes comes into the picture.

In order to save the energy it takes to "condition" fresh air, aircraft are now designed to recirculate more of the air within the plane and bring in less fresh air.

I read an article several years ago that stated that, towards the end of a coast to coast flight, the air in each breath a passenger inhales has been in the lungs of three other persons.

I don't know wheteher there have been documented cases of SARS contracted during a flight , we probably wouldn't be told even if there was, but there have been documented cases of tuberculosis which was contracted during air tavel.

Some slight changes were made when flight crews started complaining of light headedness caused by high CO2 levels, but a significant chance of spreading disease still exists.

Some airlines are currently using infrared scanners to detect people who have an above normal temperature.

 

ahem there was GIGANTIC FLU OUTBREAK THIS YEAR!!!!!!!11Everyone i knew was getting sick. School was canceled in some places. during the break, teacahers came and sterilized stuff and sprayed a ton of lysol.

 

and not a word about it in the media!
Very strange!!:bugeye:

 

Point being?

And ...?

:m:,
Tiassa

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SARS

For lots of info google "China flight 112 SARS"

The below link lists the international restrictions. Some countries have really taken this seriously. CLICK CANCEL on the down load and the page will come up.

http://www.travel.com.hk/notes.htm

 

My question ....

A few years ago, there was a general decree to slaughter all poultry and game fowl in Hong Kong in an effort to slow the spread of the annual Hong Kong flu, which was particularly rough that year.

My question is simple: Will we be declaring each new stage of aggression and adaption in a virus to be a wholly new disease?

In 1918, a Spanish influenza epidemic killed 1,600 in Seattle, 700,000 in the USA, and 21,000,000 people worldwide.

Every once in a while, influenza and other simple diseases get out of control. It is a statistical inevitability. Coronavirus, the alleged cause of SARS, also is an alleged cause of the common cold:

I really don't know what the rest of the "modern" (read "industrialized", "first-") world is like; I've never had the money to travel. But it seems to me that Americans, at least, really don't slow down to take care of themselves. And in random debates that occur in leftist and also Libertarian circles, you occasionally hear reminders that nonwhite cultures didn't suffer cancer rates similar to the modern American standard until they modernized. That would seem to indicate to me that as other cultures become more "Americanized", they run themselves ragged more like Americans tend to. Of course, it's a dubious allegation in the sense that I've never cared to validate it for myself because it rarely comes up in any functional sense. Yet I find myself thinking of it now.

So a coronavirus is particularly nasty this year. If only to gratify the conspiracy theorists, I'll point out that coronavirus can be easily altered and suggest that if WHO can find veterinary scientists who can report this ....

(If you didn't draw a paranoid terrorism conclusion from that, good. I only mention it for those who like to frighten themselves silly.)

But last year I had a cold that bothered me for weeks. The year before, I had a cold that actually took me out of work for a couple days then disappeared quickly. When I was in high school, my girlfriend and I traded a bug that mutated rapidly; we were sick from October to May.

"SARS" is a scary word that describes, at best, a particularly tough seasonal cold.

And given that alleged SARS cases include atypical symptoms that happen to look like the common flu ... I just don't buy it.

An interesting link regarding: Amoy Gardens SARS outbreak.

You'll notice the report doesn't mention that the outbreak stopped when the faulty sewage line was shut down.

I have not bought premium access to Jon Rappaport's site, but he, at least, is alleging somewhere in his archives (I read it when it was a new story on his site) that the outbreak stopped when a doctor took initiative and shut down the leaking sewage pipe. Given that the Amoy Gardens SARS outbreak had "unusual symptoms", we ought to at least consider the number of diseases that fit the Amoy Gardens profile.

I'm sorry, but a vicious strain of common flu, common cold, or grab-bag of sewage-fed microbes just doesn't add up to a new disease to me.

Anyone want to buy me a plane ticket? Send me to a SARS epicentre. Afterward I will treat any symptoms I develop as a common cold or flu, and not seek emergency medical attention. I will quarantine myself in order to assuage the fears of the paranoid, and I will survive SARS easily on treatments less severe than most people engage for their seasonal cold and flu. (I don't like taking anything for a cold. I occasionally submit to cough drops.)

Seriously. I'll do it.

There is no SARS.

Think of it this way: SARS actually fits a profile described by Cris Carter in X-Files (and, I'm sure, many conspiracy theorists before him). Now, I'm not an easy subscriber to conspiracy theories, but a "manufactured" epidemic is more than plausible. And I just don't get why the scientists are having PR firms write the press releases. But when I was a kid, if I talked about the possibility that life in the United States of America would include the USA-PATRIOT Act, include wars on such pretexts as we have fought, and saw thousands of people victimized by law enforcement for their ethnicity such as our Muslim Americans have been, I would be denounced as paranoid and even sinister.

Such stuff was the work of freaked-out conspiracy theorists.

Of course, it is my today, and, apparently, my tomorrow.

There is no SARS. Think of "Hong Kong flu" or "Spanish flu". SARS exists inasmuch as either of those influenza bugs are their own separate disease.

Every year people die of the flu, and people die of common colds when they develop into pneumonia.

Would someone please demonstrate to me that this year's influenza and SARS mortalities exceed an annual or multi-year cyclical average in such a way as to compel me that anything is going on here?

At the next apex of the sunspot cycle, will we claim that the sun is about to explode?

:m:,
Tiassa

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We shouldn't overhype sars, but we should ask ourselves why do these annual flues most of the times start in china and what measures can be taken? I mean, India is also a dense crowded country with questionable water quality at some places, yet neighbour china is where the epidemics starts..., so I suspect it must have something to do with chinese foodhabits (for instance, in india there is a strong religious/vegetarian tradition, effectively blocking chicken to human infection) and/or the way they practice agriculture...

Ideas?

 

I am not into any conspiracy theory regarding SARS. But it is a virulent deadly strain of virus which has the potential to do as much harm as the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919.

In fact the death rate for SARS is now calculated by the NCDC to be 5.9%, as compared to a 2% death rate during the 1918 epidemic which killed 25,000,000 people due too its rapid spread.

It is still unknown whether the virulence of SARS will increase as time passes, as many viral diseases historically have.

I see nothing wrong with taking precautionary measures that could save thousands of lives.

 

JusticeUSA

I'm curious if you have a stat indicating anything about how many of those deaths are "typical" SARS deaths, and how many are "atypical".

The Amoy Gardens story is important (especially if I get hold of one article I can't find about it) for a couple of reasons: There is the suggestion that there was no actual SARS at Amoy Gardens (missing article), and, furthermore, the "SARS" at Amoy Gardens carried "atypical" symptoms. Before the Amoy Gardens outbreak, it was hard enough to tell SARS from the common cold. After the Amoy Gardens outbreak, it was hard enough to tell SARS from the common flu. SARS, as I understand it, now looks like two separate diseases.

And while I agree that defensive measures to save people's lives are important, it is very important to make sure there is something to defend against. Why are PR firms writing the "scientific" announcements? While much is said about coronavirus and SARS, there are serious implications about the science behind that conclusion; it was concluded, passed out in a Press Release, and never really verified. Perhaps that verification has occurred in the last couple of weeks, but I haven't heard of it. As far as I can tell, everyone's reacting to tailored press releases and not the actual science of the situation.

The problem for me is that I am in fact becoming a little paranoid because I promise you that the conditions we argue about in the US (e.g. USA-PATRIOT Act, &c) are such that in my youth we were ridiculed as paranoid for imagining that it could ever come to this.

The biggest hitch in any conspiracy theory is that restriction of movement, while it makes sense to a paranoid, martial state, does not make sense for a nation like the US or China, who are dependent on travel and foreign trade, to lock down. So the primary conspiracy, that SARS is a red herring to cover the further spread of martialization through "free" societies, lacks a couple of logical points.

But science by press release, seemingly random assignations of "SARS" (it doesn't look like the other SARS cases; it must therefore be SARS) ... no, it doesn't look right to me. There is something afoot here, and I would like to know what it is, since conspiracy theorists always come up a step short, even when they turn out to be right.

I'm serious, though ... buy me a plane ticket. At present I'm actually bleeding internally from a mysterious something that isn't cancer and doesn't yet have a determined cause. Send me to a SARS city and I'll let myself be infected. Not only will I survive (easily), but if I'm diagnosed, I guarantee you internal bleeding will become an indicator of SARS. And unless I have a doctor shoving antibiotics into my hand and saying, "Take these or else", I don't medicate for anything (okay, anything but recreation).

Of course, with the SARS hysteria, I can see the headlines after I prove myself right. It won't be, "SARS isn't real!" Rather, it will be something ridiculous like, "Marijuana a valuable tool in fighting SARS." Not only that, but I would expect to open the paper the next day and see that raping virgins really does cure HIV.

:m:,
Tiassa

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Tiassa

Most of the Stats I find on SARS seem to range from ambivalent to just plain contradictory. I seem to find a lot of links that say ,"this page is no longer available" ,when I click on them.

The latest I heard was that the virus is commonly found in a type of civet cat which the Chinese consider a delicacy. (ABC evening news) It makes me kind of wonder if perhaps someone put some uncooked kitty down the garbage disposals at the Amoy gardens.(just kidding, but then, maybe not)

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This whole thing reminds me of the situation with Legionares disease, that too, had the medical community baffled for quite some time, and it still pops up occasionally.

Getting any information from medical sites is nearly impossible. They always need to do a double blind study followed by a year long statistical analysis.


I went through a year of undiagnosed internal blood loss myself. After about $4,000 worth of tests and procedures it finally cleared up on its own.?? Take care and eat lots of foods high in iron.

 

SARS, a bio-attack

SARS

I noticed this case first in early March. A news in World Journal said an American businessman (Chinese ethnic) went from Shanghai to Hanoi and got sick there on 2/26.

He then chartered a private plane to HongKong on 3/6. At that time, nobody knew SARS. I was impressed by the cost he paid for the charted plane: $600,000. I thought if he would pay that much, he must know it was fatal and hard to be cured. Maybe he wanted to back to US? The hospital he stayed in Hanoi was among the best in Vietnam, named French Hospital. Several days later, another news reported his death on 3/13. I later knew his name was Johnny Chen. With his death, people were aware of a new disease. But until 3/18, newspaper still called it "mysterious illness".

Source and how it spreads.

Johnny Chen was said the source of SARS infected two dozens of medical workers in Hanoi Frence Hospital. But I noticed there was no report of infection in Princess Margaret Hospital in Hongkong where he was sent to and died. That was a puzzle. How could he be the super contagious source in one hospital but didn't infect others in another hospital?

Though there was no infection in Princess Margaret Hospital, in another Hospital Prince Wales of HongKong, there were about dozens medical workers caught the disease at same time. There were two other sites where people were infected in group.

One was Jin-Hua Hotel where 6 tourists who had stayed in 9th floor caught the SARS. Another one was Tao-da Mansion where about 300 residents were infected. I noticed there were no report of infection of family members of sicked medical staffs. And there was no report of colleagues being infected by those 300 residents of Tao-da Mansion.

I think SARS maybe spread by close contact. And it seems more like a disease spread by location. That is: someone had visited the above three sites, left high contagious SARS source. People lived, or worked in these places caught the disease by touching the source or inhaling the air from source. Though there were conflict report of how SARS spreading.

A report may represent my opinion. Quote, "The expert of mainland China found, a patient who was among the people first being infected, had no family member being infected, but friend who visited him got sick. The first foreigner who died of SARS in mainland China, had none friend with close relationship being infected. But those who had been with him for a short time, in same location, e.g. being in same lift, caught SARS." (World Journal, 4/20/03)

It could be infected by touching polluted spot, or by inhaling the air from a polluted ventillation output. The above three sites all have common ventillation system. (Hospital, Hotel, and mansion where lift using ventillation) If so, it looks like a bio-weapon attack.

 

Re: SARS, a bio-attack

If I didn't know you, your post might sound believable... until you make that very large jump in the last sentence.

 

Re Bio Attack

As long as we are on the subject of bio attack. What about the West Nile Virus? It was pretty much confined to NY the first year, then spread to most of the other states the next year.

The CDC is saying this year there will be even more cases and that it will spread to the remaing states.

http://perdurabo10.tripod.com/themindofjamesdonahue/id325.html

The guy in the link aboves sounds a little flakey. below is info from Cornell.

http://environmentalrisk.cornell.edu/WNV/

 

Yeah but, What happened to the flu this year? There has been no mention of it in the media!