The Known Facts About SARS

I was looking for a site that could tell me simply about SARS and I found it and I would like to share it with you.

I've read the first two sections.The first titled "About SARS" describes the supposed origins of SARS,the second titled"The Bug" concisely explains the known science.It was this second section I found most illuminating and I highly recomend that anyone,like me,who is sightly confused by,what seems to be,contradictory statements in the media,reads this piece.

The two pieces are not long and can give anyone a good grounding in the basic science of SARS as it emerges as the dominating story of the year.

www.abc.net.au...

The first graph represents the increase in infections and deaths attributed to SARS as of the 26th April.The second shows the growth of yeast and follows the classic "S" shaped curve or sigmoid curve that epidemics are known to follow.The SARS graph is much shallower because yeast growth is quite rapid it is only the shape I am trying to highlight.

Below,copied by permission,is pasted the piece from which the SARS graph comes from.It explains well that we apear to still be in the exponential phase of this epidemic.
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The graph shows the number of world cases of SARS, worldwide deaths, and cases in the United States. The vertical distance is the logarithm base 10 of the number of cases. Each factor of 10 increase causes the graph to rise by the same increment. The data is from the World Health Organization (WHO) at the Cumulative Number of Reported Cases (SARS) page.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is a new disease that originated in southern China in November 2002. Please see the US Centers for Disease Control's SARS factsheet. It includes a description of the symptoms, what to do if you think you have been exposed, and what precautions to take to avoid exposure.

One of the best ways of judging the growth if an epidemic is to make a bar chart the date of onset of symptoms of the disease. The WHO has prepared an excellent Date of Onset Bar Chart. Please note that the date of onset is not known for 1/3 of the cases. The decline in the last seven days of the chart is deceptive, since people with mild initial symptoms have not yet been detected or counted.

Here is a diagram of the people infected by one "super spreader" at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong.

Forecast
The purpose of this site is to allow the reader to check if the growth of SARS has become exponential. If the doubling times mentioned below remain constant, then SARS is growing exponentially. If the doubling times continue to increase, then the growth of cases is less than exponential. For comparison, links to several linear scale graphs are listed at the end of this page. Note that their slopes are rising.

The number of reported cases of SARS in the world is doubling every 22 days. This is implied by the slope of the blue curve, using the data available on April 26, 2003. There will be 100,000 cases on about August 3, 2003. A million cases will be reached on about October 16, 2003, and ten million on about December 29, 2003. These predictions will change every day as new data changes the slope of the curves. Cases after April 1st are used to compute the slope.

The slope of red curve implies that the number of reported worldwide deaths due to SARS will double every 12 days. The number will be 100,000 on about August 7, 2003. A million deaths will be reached on about September 17, 2003, and ten million on about October 28, 2003. This forecast will change every day as new data changes the slope of the curves. Note that the world deaths appear to be doubling faster than the world cases. Either the number of deaths will double more slowly in the future, or the number of cases will double faster. Cases after April 1st are used to compute the slope.

The slope of black curve implies that the number of reported cases of SARS in the United States will double every 16.4 days. Until April 20th, the US CDC reported the number of cases they investigated, rather then the number of confirmed SARS cases. The numbers shown on the graph before April 20th are estimates. On April 18th, there were 35 confirmed cases in the US using the WHO definition, and 208 cases by the old method. US data before April 20th has been multiplied by 35/208 which is 0.1683. Cases after April 1st are used to compute the slope.

There have been no deaths in the United States, so no forecast can be made about future death rates.

Epidemics usually follow S-shaped curves. The forecast here are based on pure exponential growth. When the middle of the S-shaped curve is reached, the rate of infection will slow, and exponential growth forecasts will no longer be useful. The reported data shows that the epidemic is still in an exponential growth phase.

The WHO does not report statistics on Sundays, so this page does not change on Sundays

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The site is well worth visiting and bookmarking as the graph and estimated exponential growth pedictions are updated daily and there are links to more imformation on it.

squeak.org...

And every day more than thousand children die of Malaria..

Malaria deaths, sadly, are actually nearer 5,000 a day.
I find the "Guardian" most useful, J-B:
for what "officially" happens, you have to count on the Chinese version of Pravda -the Govt. site:
www.xinhuanet.com...
Still panic and rumour here; but it is worth remembering that more people die of influenza each year in American than the current daily rate of SARS deaths in China would amount to if extrapolated.
The problem remains: the fact that it's unknown, and Govt. policy here.
I suspect that the fact that it has moved to affluent developed countries is also partly responsible for the panic: no one seems to bother very much about epidemics in Africa, S. America or elsewhere.

The Western media are also somewhat guilty of panic-mongering: over the weekend, in the UK press, for example, one "expert" was given prominence: Prof Anderson of Imperial. But no one mentioned that this is the same chap who forecast (quite incorrectly) the end of the world over Mad Cows and CJD.
There are other "experts" taking a much more cautious stance who simply are not getting the coverage.

Helix and Estragon are correct.

That was a wonderful site on SARS, and for those of you who wonder how it started, this page states very nicely what we know: www.abc.net.au...

As the report says: "The disease is still in its early stages, and as often happens with a novel emerging pathogen which jumps to humans from animals - as this one seems to have done - the virus is at times very virulent, and not all of those infected show the same symptoms."

"One in five of those infected have to be admitted to intensive care, with at least one organ in difficulty, usually a mild case of cardiovascular failure. One in 10 requires assistance to breathe"

That's fairly similar to the stats for pneumonia.

I just watched a program on Channel 4 (UK) that was quite informative. It gave the same basic information that the links provide.

I found it interesting that this virsus can be tramsmitted via human faeces.

It does appear to be a tough bug, I hope the scientific community find a cure ASAP.

This is the latest graph as of 28th April.

As you can see worldwide cases and deaths are still rising exponentially.

This could be distorted due to the inability of the Chinese to get their epidemic under control.

Sharp rises in the graph would occur if another "Super Spreader" emerged,or if SARS mutated.

It is also important to bare in mind that with the severe financial consequences to any country with reported cases of SARS inevitiable,the temptation to cover up cases in,as yet,uneffected countries would be obvious.

Also notice how the reported cases worldwide(blue line) and reported deaths(red line) appear to be converging as SARS seems to be deadlier than first thought.If the lines do converge then death becomes the only prognosis for those diagnosed with SARS.

[Edited on 29-4-2003 by John bull 1]

Actually, that's not an exponential rise, and the rate of rise is delcining (which is what we'd expect in a slow-spreading disease where they are effectively using quarrantines.)

Doctors in Canada are questioning the origin of the virus. They are saying that they only find the coronavirus, the accepted cause of the disease, in less than half of the people they are treating for it.

It doesn't say what the Canadian Doctors think the cause is, probably because they don't know.

Interestingly though, the article mentions the man made possiblity, and that some fingers are pointing to the U.S military...

"An American researcher has suggested a different possible origin for Sars: military biological weapons programmes.

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, said the theory shouldn't be ruled out."

news.bbc.co.uk...

Originally posted by kegs
"An American researcher has suggested a different possible origin for Sars: military biological weapons programmes.

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, said the theory shouldn't be ruled out."

Interesting, but i think A virus like that, that expands that fast, that is deadly, doesn�t appear on the mother nature in the year 2003 like these, is obvious is man made, and the first cases are located in a Super poblated area as Asia is... china specially...
i don�t think is made for military purposes, to deadly and brutal..