Henry, from what I've seen of the medical industry and what happens to people, the doctors prefer to deal with the actual outcome for the individual concerned. So they talk symptoms and probabilities rather than causal relationships. That's because the causal relationships are impossibly complex and make the traveling salesman's problem look simple. Each individual has their own outcome, ranging from nothing to death. Travelling salesman problem here:
w1.859.telia.com
math.princeton.edu
That's how the cigarette companies could for decades claim that cigarettes don't cause cancer, which is true, because there are some people who smoke mightily all their lives and don't get cancer. Similarly, there are people with HIV and sars virus who are asymptomatic and never suffer the diseases which others suffer. But nobody gets AIDS who doesn't have HIV and nobody dies from sars who doesn't have the sars virus, so I think we can blame those bugs.
So, yes, the people in Singapore and Vancouver have the sars bug in them, but they don't have sars. But whatever the reason that 10% of those infected last time around [who were identified] died is somewhat irrelevant. It was the sars which did them in.
If they only died because of genetic predisposition, immune system antibody lack, nutritional deficiency, age-related weakening, smoking, co-factor viruses or other infections, lack of ventilator or whatever other contributing reason, it was still the sars what done 'em in.
The average bloke on the street isn't too pedantic about the symptomatic definition. They want to know whether it's the damn bug back. It is. Next, they want to avoid being the next case contributing to the statistical review of the bug and its impact on people.
Because the bug mutates so much, it needs not just one name, but many names. Like Henry Niman, Mary Niman, John Niman, Scary Niman and This One Will Kill You Niman. The common cold is listed as just "cold". "Flu" is usually similarly generic. But sometimes there's Spanish Flu, Asian Flu and a few other nicknames.
At present, there's just sars. Doctors are deeming the symptoms to be the meaning of sars rather than the actual causal agent. Which is understandable, but not going to help stop the disease spreading if it's the complex factors which show up with 'flu season' which make it virulently fatal.
So I suppose that's why there is CARS and ABS rather than sars. Plus the normal political ideology of the muckity mucks = don't tell the plebs what's going on or they'll panic. Which of course makes us panic much more, because we know they are lying bastards.
Mqurice |
