April 30, 2003
CATCH THE FEVER
Nobody wants to repeat the mistakes that let AIDS ravage a good
segment of the population because alarmist talk served as a healthcare
inducement against free and easy sex and also involved the forced
discussion of gay guys doing it. So the SARS scare is roaring ahead
and proving more contagious than the syndrome itself. I think we could
all use a healthy dose of skepticism.
Why am I skeptical? One reason is the use of the term
"syndrome" in the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome assignation. I
know that they've pinpointed the germinal root of transmission to SARS
as some sort of specific virus, but syndrome usually connotes a very
relaxed version of disease classification. Here's how syndromes (and
health scares) usually progress. People get sick, sometimes they die.
Doctors aren't sure as to the exact cause of death. A mental instinct
for lumping unexplained events into a pattern-forming trend occurs.
Someone suggests that we're suffering a syndrome. Previously
unexplained deaths are attributed to said syndrome. The media picks up
the story. People start freaking out. Things that previously would
have been regarded as benign colds are now regarded as "the syndrome".
Psychosomatic illness ensues.
I have no doubt that there is a virus that affects the
respiratory system that kills some people. The flu kills people,
especially those with compromised immune systems. I think the current
death rate for SARS is about 4% for those infected.
href="http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,58552,00.html">According
to the World Health Organization (WHO), SARS has infected almost
3,500 people and killed and killed 170. How many people currently
inhabit the earth, 4 billion? I bet more than 170 people choke to
death on cherry pits every month than 170. And this is a health scare
that was reported by The New York Post the other day to have
costed Asian economies nearly $30 billion.
The Asian aspect is important as far as health scares go. A good
panic is always helped when 1) it seems to be borne from foreigners and
2) the foreign nature of the disease makes its apparent lack of affect
more understandable. At this time, not a single case of SARS has been
reported in the U.S. Still, people are freaking out about it. That's
because it's all happening over there. You know, amongst the
teeming hordes. The truth is, not that many people have caught SARS,
fewer people have died from it, and that's in spite of a communist
healthcare system that's probably not that great to begin with. Given
that we're in an environment where any sudden death linked at all to a
respiratory infection will now be classified as a SARS fatality, am I
wrong in being completely underwhelmed at the lack of bodies piling up?
This might be the worst call of all time, but I'm going to go out on a
limb and say that if SARS isn't complete bullshit, it is a phenomenon
that's being blown completely out of proportion. A new plague may sell
a few papers today, but next year SARS, if discussed at all, will be
discounted as a media-driven hoax that affected fewer people than rabid
dogs worldwide.
Posted by Lexiphane at April 30, 2003 10:28 AM
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