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To: TobagoJack who wrote (32528)	4/27/2003 3:01:23 AM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

The hope, that it's just an episode, is waning Interview with a German virologist Wolfgang Preiser, who was - together with other WHO experts - in China scouting after causes of the lung infection The virologist Wolfgang Preiser is a member of the WHO team, that traveled 23rd March to China to trace out the virus, that causes SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). This Saturday Preiser is back home. The 37 years old German is the top officer of the Virology institute in Frankfurt. Kai Strittmatter spoke in China with the SARS Expert. SZ: Herr Dr. Preiser, you said, that spread of SARS is the biggest problem of the present-day world. You still think so? Wolfgang Preiser: Yes. At present it's being decided if we will succeed to destroy SARS and put the episode ad acta. That's our great hope - which is waning day to day. SZ: Why? Preiser: There's new infections, it's getting more and more complicated. We think of the situation with AIDS 20 years ago; it started with a couple of hundred of infected, Had we more money and resources at disposal, then the situation would possibly look quite different today. SZ: What would life with SARS mean? Preiser: We will see in the next five to six months, if we need to change our approach to patients in the similar manner as back then with AIDS. Since AIDS you automatically go for hand shoes when you see blood. When SARS stays with us for ever, then nobody will ever, without thinking twice, enter the room with people, who are coughing and who have temperature. SZ: Do people in Europe have to be afraid? Preiser: No! If we keep our attention awake, then the problem will get reduced to imported cases. We do not need to fear: it's not an influenza epidemic - were it so, we would have many millions of cases by now, not just a few thousand. SZ: Whence then the hysteria, we see in many places? Preiser: It's a combination of attraction to bizarre and of incomprehensible. After all more people die from car accidents, but in the case of virus you have the infection factor. There's „Superspreaders“, where everyone of them can infect between 40 and 110 persons. It is a serious sickness, that has meanwhile brought even young people in oh point zero seconds to the doorsteps of death. That is something strange. SZ: Is the fear in the heavily hit Peking then justified? Preiser: I am on the way there right now and I am sure: this evening in Peking I will feel quite alright. I think it's been overdone. I have nothing against paralyzing a country for a few weeks, when done in an intelligent fashion. But the problem is, the Chinese do not trust their government any more. And in Peking there's the danger, that the drastic measures will throw out the baby with the water. It's the human nature: when you threaten people with penalties, you do not get their cooperation, you make them go under. That's counterproductive. SZ: You have been in China for five weeks. What's your bottom line? Preiser: The contrast in comparison to the beginning is extraordinary, the public conscience has changed completely, even if you do not need to be a cynic to realize, that the fear of the economic backlash is behind the enormous change. Here in Shanghai, on our inspection tours, we simply tell in the car: now we want you to drive us there, and it's done. That's a sign of a great self-confidence. SZ: Shanghai reports still just two infected. Do you believe the number? Preiser: Shanghai was evidently considerably earlier and better prepared as Beijing. Additionally it is a problem of the classification also. That explains partly the numbers. The worst however is, that the other provinces slept through all of this. They'll definitely get the check for it. SZ: Have you learnt much about the virus? Preiser: Quite a lot. Especially in the Guangdong province. Nobody in the whole world has more clinical experience with SARS. SZ: Does virus really come from Guangdong, where farmers, pigs and poultry live under the same roof? Preiser: That's pure speculation. The new corona virus does not match any of the known animal viruses. We don't know, where it is coming from. We should avoid brand marking the South Asia as the pestilence kitchen of the world, even if it enticing to criticize barbarian eating habits. Aids came out of Africa, Hanta virus – that also leads to serious lung complications – from USA, and BSE catastrophe is made-in-UK. 25.04.2003 18:33 SARS - Süddeutsche transl DJ