Re: spin - just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me. Just read a recent report by Laurie Garrett on the White House whitewashing air quality reports in NYC immediately after 9/11.
I take this rather personally because I was keeping up with the reports of asbestos in the air and predicting that the EPA would declare the site a Superfund site and pay for cleanup, and actually got into an argument with someone on SI about it. Then the reports of asbestos started being denied, and I had to eat crow, which didn't sit well, especially because the guy on the other side of the argument was nasty about it.
Turns out that there was, in fact, asbestos in the air, but this was denied, for reasons which are not at all clear to me. Apparently getting Wall Street up and running was a matter of national security.
commondreams.org
The Chinese government thought denying SARS was a matter of national security, and it appears that the Canadian government does, too.
You're absolutely right about the animal reservoir, and the asymptomatic animal handlers in China. The flip side of that, as Mq has suggested, is that the SARS death rate must be lower if you expand the definition of infection to include those who have antibodies but no symptoms. |
