From: slider@atashram.com

Feb. 18, 2020

The mysterious [sars] virus first emerged in the winter in eastern China,
a never-before-seen pathogen that would rattle the world’s sense of safety and ignite a global panic.

In the months that followed, hundreds of people began seeking medical
treatment because they were coughing, struggling to breathe and, in some
cases, approaching death.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-18/sars-coronavirus-china-epidemic

Scientists racing to quell the outbreak determined the source was a novel strain of coronavirus. The World Health Organization called for immediate action to prevent the global health threat from sweeping across multiple continents and killing thousands.

It was early 2003, the beginning of the battle against severe acute
respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS. The SARS outbreak was
the first deadly epidemic caused by a coronavirus.

“It was a tremendous concern,” said Alan Rowan, a public health professor at Florida State University involved in Florida’s response to the SARS outbreak. “It was a novel virus, and it was frightening.”

Much like the strain of coronavirus currently spreading across the world,
the SARS virus prompted people to hoard face masks, cancel trips to Asia
and institute massive quarantines amid fears that the disease would become entrenched.

But eight months after SARS began circulating, it was contained. The virus
died out.

The stamping out of SARS has been lauded as one of the biggest recent
public health victories, achieved with a strong and swift response and a
dose of good luck.

But as cases of the new coronavirus swell, it appears less likely that
history is going to repeat itself. The virus’ path suggests containment
will be much more difficult than with SARS and the harm much greater,
experts say.

On Feb. 9, the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed that of SARS. In the
days since, it has climbed even higher.

After originating in China’s southeastern Guangdong province in late 2002, SARS had spread by early spring to approximately 1,500 people.

Officials from the World Health Organization said SARS could become the
most serious health threat to emerge in more than 20 years, with the
exception of AIDS.

SARS was a pneumonia-like illness that killed about 1 in every 10 people struck, far higher than the estimated 1-in-50 mortality rate for COVID-19 infections.

“There was enormous panic,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law.

The SARS outbreak, which reached 29 countries, was ultimately contained
using traditional public health measures, such as testing, isolating
patients and screening people at airports and other places where they
might spread the virus, Gostin said. The strategy is simple: If sick
people can be stopped from infecting healthy people, the disease will eventually die off.

But limiting the current outbreak with these tried-and-true public health strategies has proved harder now because of the sheer number of cases,
Gostin said.

By the end of the SARS epidemic, 8,000 people had been infected. Already,
more than 73,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and some
experts think undetected milder cases push the true tally even higher.

“It’s affecting hundreds of thousands of people, and potentially a lot
more going forward. It’s really hard to contain once you’ve got that kind of saturation,” Gostin said. “This is a much bigger challenge than SARS.”

During SARS, remembered as the first pandemic of the 21st century, public health officials watched in horror as an interconnected, global society facilitated the spread of disease like never before. A Canadian couple who visited Hong Kong started a SARS outbreak in Toronto that killed 24 people.

Those risks are even greater now. Chinese people travel domestically and internationally at a much higher rate now than in 2003, which makes
containment “that much more difficult,” Gostin said.

The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 an international
health emergency and announced Friday that the virus reached a fifth
continent, Africa, after a case was detected in Egypt. Any dips in weekly
case numbers should not be interpreted as signs of abatement, officials
say.

“This outbreak could still go in any direction,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference last week.

Officials know how fickle these viruses can be. The SARS response
benefited from “good fortune as well as good science,” Dr. David Heymann, who led the World Health Organization’s infectious disease unit during the SARS pandemic, wrote in a 2004 paper evaluating the international response
to the disease.

Officials were lucky that SARS never popped up in developing countries
with less sophisticated healthcare systems that would have struggled to
contain the illness, he wrote. The virus was also easier to stop because
it turned out to have relatively low transmissibility, he wrote.

“Its rapid containment is one of the biggest success stories in public
health in recent years,” Heymann wrote. “How narrow was the escape from an international health disaster? What tipped the scales?”

Scientists will probably soon find out. SARS and COVID-19 are like
cousins, sharing 70% of their genetic material. Both are coronaviruses, a family of viruses that before 2003 had been known to cause only the common
cold in humans.

While the SARS virus replicated deep in people’s lungs, probably
contributing to the higher mortality rate, that also made it less likely
to spread than the COVID-19 virus, said Dr. Stanley Perlman, a
microbiologist at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses.

The new coronavirus grows in people’s noses and airways, so it can be more easily spread through coughing and sneezing, like the flu, he said. Though people with SARS probably weren’t contagious until they were very ill,
that isn’t the case for COVID-19, so it will be harder to catch people
before they infect others, he said.

“As soon as you start having very, very minor symptoms, that sore throat, that itchiness, that sneezing, then you’re contagious,” Perlman said. “I don’t think it’s going to be like SARS and just go away.”

Even if COVID-19 doesn’t die out, it could wane so much that cases become extremely rare, or emerge only in the winter. Viruses tend to have
seasonality, appearing for only a few months a year, so some hope warmer weather will make the virus recede.

With this outbreak, international officials were notified much sooner and
the virus was sequenced much faster than with SARS. Yet COVID-19 remains trickier to get ahead of because of the virus’ traits, said Brittany
Kmush, a public health researcher at Syracuse University’s Falk College.

Viruses spread most when they are very contagious and not that deadly, she said. If a virus is very lethal, patients often die before they can
transmit the illness to many other people.

COVID-19’s low mortality rate compared with SARS, though a relief to
doctors, may actually hinder prevention efforts, she said.

“I think if SARS had similar characteristics to this coronavirus, it would still be circulating,” Kmush said.

### - sars (covid-18) was scary at the time because of its seemingly rapid transmission whereby it lingered on hard surfaces for several days and
anyone touching that surface and then touching their face/mouth/nose etc, caught it, it's also far higher rate of mortality (up to 20%) meaning it
would have been having up to 20-times (or more) the current fatality rate
of covid-19; a truly terrifying scenario had it also been as-infectious
and as-lingering as the current covid-19 is! (one dude in china showing
only a mild temperature was infectious for 49 days??)

so imagine now a similarly 'infectious' virus that produced something like ebola with it's 80% fatality rate instead? and you then have a true end-of-the-world type scenario to deal with! one that could easily
kill-off 80% of humanity (4 out of every 5 people!) and our civilisation
would very likely collapse altogether in only a matter of months and not
come back from it for several 100 years, if at all!

iow: the lessons we're all learning today via a far less fatal, albeit
highly transmissible, disease, are invaluable for avoiding any such even deadlier scenarios in the future that we're likely to be faced with?
which, let's face it; is indeed likely to occur again at some point!

economies can bounce back but populations can't return so easily nor as
rapidly once they've gone right down, so then some kind of oiled-system of 'rapid-response' has to be put in-place in order to 'avert' any such society-ending scenarios to come; instant global lockdowns that last a
month or 2 the moment the word goes out and so stopping the spread of any
such diseases in their tracks?

not really having any choice in the matter, we thus surely have to intelligently 'rearrange' our societies and economic structures to be able
to cope and still function during such lockdowns to come! which, over say
the next 100 years, is likely to be quite a few times! (maybe 4 or 5 times minimally?)

that while we're all only too happy to just blame china this time round
for their reticence in coming forward and announcing this novel virus to
the world, the chances are 'most' countries would have likely behaved
virtually the same as no one likes to admit having a sudden weakness where keeping up the appearance of strength/security is concerned?

that it's the 'competitive' and warring nature of our various nations that accordingly 'creates' these situations of reticence, and so all that has
to simply 'go' if we all want to survive long into the future!

that the way we 'are' structured, has rendered us all very vulnerable to certain things 'like' deadly pandemics, and so something major has to
change with the way we've currently arranged our world!

that if every country on the planet was part & parcel of something
like/say: 'the united states of the world' instead of a bunch of various separate nations all vying to control it one way or another themselves,
then we could have a 'shared' world whereby everyone just chips-in what
they just so happen to be good at doing?

europe is actually a fairly good example of such a model no? a dozen or
more countries dropping their borders and all sharing a single currency,
the italians haven't lost their identity anymore than the french have in
all this for example, yet all these nations are seeking to work together
under an umbrella of unity; which kinda works for the most part even
though the uk has now decided to leave it heh, but then that's besides the point...

similarly, and in such a world: china could carry on just being china,
just not trying (nor needing anymore) to assert itself economically in the
face of stiff competition... ditto russia... and the islamic states too! -
the 'wealth' of the world would belong TO the world and be equally shared around to wherever it's required/needed at the time!

everyone has something to contribute! every nation has! it's just the
drive for world domination by any one particular nation that has got to
go? ('empire' is so last century anyway?)

just the MONEY such a 'united' world would SAVE on needing armies and
weapons alone could likely achieve social miracles in terms of alleviating world poverty, education, and all sorts of even undreamed of things!

that everything that's currently happening in the world just now over this virus, is actually an 'invitation' - and the opportunity - to begin implementing such changes to our world-view!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgkThdzX-8

"you may say i'm a dreamer
but am not the only one..."

(heh even i could maybe live in such a world as that...)

;)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)