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Biotech / Medical : SARS and Avian Flu -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Niman who wrote (1830)	11/30/2004 11:24:51 AM
From: Biomaven	Respond to of 4232

I am a non-gloomy Dr in IHT, but a WHO critic. Last night's NYT is the longest and I am no longer a Dr and am gloomy. This morning's online is the same in today's printed version. I still don't have my degree back, but I am no longer gloomy. Chuckle. Recombinant shuffling of words and phrases between stories... Be nice to do a study of how stories and memes spread and mutate - my guess is it's pretty analogous to genes. Peter

To: Henry Niman who wrote (1830)	11/30/2004 9:08:52 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4232

<"That estimate is unscientific, unjustified and an inaccurate extrapolation from the current situation," Dr. Stöhr said.> Given the "official", "scientific" estimates of sars mortality compared with my own, I think I'll assume my own estimates are correct and their's are wrong. If Dr Stöhr wants to make that claim, he should say in what way your [and my] estimate is unscientific and unjustified. Perhaps he did elaborate and his comments weren't reported. Given how influenza moves around the world and the proportion of people who get infected, their "official" mortality estimate of 7 million or whatever it was, [with the latest upper-bound guess of 100 million], is way too low. After the first million people have died, and another 10 million are on their way to death [because the infection will have already got a grip on them or soon will have], people will take serious evasive action. After serious evasive action, the virus will be like an American armoured column driving around Baghdad looking for some uniformed Iraqi soldiers to shoot at. We will all have run for cover. So I can see that the rate of infection will drop quickly. There might be only 50 million infected with 35 million dead. That's still enough to disrupt the world very dramatically. Heck, even if there really are only 7 million killed, the avoidance consequences will result in great disruption and economic loss. The potential scale of the catastrophe compared with the relatively trivial damage done be terrorists shows how out of proportion official reaction is to the two dangers. Once H5N1 in human influenza form gets a grip, the only thing that will stop it is a vaccine development or failing that, elimination of susceptible people and immunity of those it doesn't kill. It would be nice to step in before nature runs its course. Mqurice