Word: viruses
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...lethal as you might fear. As of last Saturday, 89 people had died of SARS, none of them in the U.S. Health officials put the mortality rate from SARS at 3.7%. By comparison, the West Nile virus killed 277 Americans last year (a 6.7% death rate), and the flu kills 36,000 people a year in the U.S. alone...
...University of Hong Kong's pathology lab is one of the few places on earth where you can stare a newly accused mass-murder suspect right in the face. Researchers there are using a powerful transmission electron microscope to examine a virus that was unknown to science just a month ago. This minuscule particle of protein-encrusted RNA is almost certainly the microbe that had, by last Saturday, infected more than 2,400 people in 19 countries--including up to 115 in the U.S.--and killed at least 89 since it began its rampage through the human population in China...
...this may seem like an overreaction to an illness that is not nearly as deadly as West Nile virus--SARS kills 3.7% of its victims, compared with West Nile's mortality rate of 6.7% last year--and evidently much less contagious than measles or even the flu. "It's the type of disease that seems to require a lot of direct close contact with somebody who's pretty sick," says Dr. Stephen Ostroff, deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta...
With war raging in Iraq, a new virus emerging in Asia and terrorism spreading around the world, there's a new premium on up-to-date information. AOL members can visit the bulletin boards at Keyword: Travel Community. Web wanderers can check out these sites...
Paradoxically, the existence of superspreaders could be good news: if just a few victims are responsible for the bulk of the outbreak, the disease should be easier to control with aggressive quarantine measures. Some doctors have also postulated that as the virus radiates from the initial patient, it becomes less virulent, meaning that those who come down with second- or third-generation infections may be in less danger. That could explain why in Europe nobody has died and most cases have not turned out to be life threatening. Says Dr. Joseph Sung, chief of clinical medicine at Prince of Wales...