CB, people change their behaviour when their lives are in peril. I know the masks worn in China are claimed not to help prevent the disease spread, but I'm not convinced. People also do other things to avoid contact with respiratory fluids. Such as washing hands more, avoiding cold food with "potato", "pumpkin" or "peas", being said over it and not kissing lots of people on the lips when they arrive home from a sars-infected area.
If sars returns, people are going to react strongly. They've seen what happened last time and will be ready. Anyone showing up at work with a sneeze will be shot. People won't be expected to come to work with a sniffle, as has been expected in the past. They'll avoid infected areas. They'll wear N95 masks if that's what's necessary.
Somebody will invent vaccinations for sars bugs - there'd be a lot of money in that.
But, maybe it is actually dead. At least the most virulent strain might be dead. Nobody in the USA died from it, yet. There must be a reason why 10% of Chinese died, but no Americans did.
Even if sars is still around, as with last November, there are so few reservoir cases that it'll take a while to spread around. This time it won't have a free pass for long. I think next season will be like the Y2K bug = a fizzer. I think we've won [more or less].
Mqurice |
