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Pastimes : SARS - what next? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (353)	4/30/2003 5:19:23 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 1070

Yiwu, it's no doubt true that a robust, vital 80 year old man will survive a sars attack better than a smoking, sickly, decrepit 60 year old woman with diabetes, congestive heart problems and pulmonary oedema. The fact is that old people have got a much longer average list of health deficits with which they cope on a daily basis. The added burden of a sars attack is often too much. I don't think the odds were that the pre-existing condition people would have died anyway. They would have carried on living for some time. You are right to point out the skewed statistics though because some were hospital patients [I'm not sure how many] and therefore already having a hard time. If the infection got into the general population, the old-age death rate would be lower than those infected while visiting hospital. Mqurice