It's hard for us outside China to really know, as they censor the news. All the gweilo bloggers I was reading in Mainland China have all left due to fear of SARS, but report that news in China was censored.
I just think it's reallyreallystrange that SARS deaths everywhere in Asia but China proper are such a high percentage of the number of infections. Also Toronto.
My gweilo bloggers in Beijing said that their health care system sucked so the lower death rate isn't due to better health care - snot all over the floor in the hospitals due to people hocking up their lungs and letting go whereever in Beijing is the norm. Maybe that's good for the immune system, after all, being exposed to germs keeps the immune system pumping.
Except for Toronto, western death rates are low, e.g., in the US it's zero, still, which is also reallyreallystrange.
China may be able to get a grip on it in Beijing - but Russia just closed their border with China - paranoia? Or is it impossible for Beijing to control the spread of SARS in the hinterlands?
kstp.com
I think the calculus in Beijing goes like this - fear of SARS is going to cost the world billions more than SARS actually will so let's pretend that SARS doesn't exist. There's no really good test for it, after all. And many many thousands of (mostly) elderly people, and people with weakened immune systems, die every year from various types of atypical pneumonia.
Why call it SARS?
After all, they have the Olympics to prepare for.
Olympic aged athletes are pretty SARS-resistant, so why scare them unnecessarily? |
