Comments on: The Heroes of SARS https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/ Fascinating true stories from science, history, and psychology since 2005 Mon, 16 Aug 2021 18:24:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 By: Ryan https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-73911 Mon, 16 Aug 2021 18:24:48 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-73911 Hi from the future!

It turns out if you don’t do anything to actively prevent it, bad things happen.

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By: tokahuke https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-73403 Thu, 09 Jul 2020 12:23:04 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-73403 In the face of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, this article gains a whole new meaning. While the events unfolded early this year, I kept remembering and remembering the words on this pages. How uncannily similar! The only difference, it seams, is that for Covid-19, there are no heroes.

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By: JericoBeans https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-71803 Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:34:47 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-71803 My (now) wife lived in North Toronto during SARS. There was a travel alert for Toronto normally reserved for 3rd world countries, concerts and events were cancelled wholesale (I specifically remember Dixie Chicks but Coldplay CAME and were “heros” for it) and Canadians were no longer welcome In the US. I worked in healthcare and attended respiratory conferences in the US regularly at the time and that was always fun with customs. The “measures” at the airports were laughable and most of the high end physicians I knew (the people that write the textbooks on stuff) said most of what they were doing was for show.

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By: ALLTHETHINGS https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-38598 Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:33:29 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-38598 I remember when the SARS outbreak was happening, the only thing I knew was that I didn’t need to go to school (or do homework) for a while. The streets were completely deserted – the only person I saw leave their apartment was our neighbor who was a nurse. I thought she was really brave for going to work when everyone was so terrified.

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By: rizz3 https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-25081 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:42:59 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-25081 ” The public perception is polluted by images of isolation-suited medics, mask-wearing city-dwellers, and unearthly infrared figures in airport thermal scanners.” I visited Taiwan during the SARS outbreak and I had to go through a thermal scanner as soon as I got off the plane. If anyone’s temperature was even slightly above normal, they would be quarantined for two weeks.

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By: TwicKeR https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-23679 Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:09:33 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-23679 I think its quite a feat for the hospital staff to show up for work each day, knowing full well they may be infected with a potentially lethal virus.
I tip my hats to you all.

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By: James Monroe https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-23445 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:00:40 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-23445 Thanks goodness for people like Jiang Yanyong. His selfless act of letting the world know what was going on behind closed doors in China was the right thing to do. He opened up the floodgates of truth behind the closed faucet of communism.

The world needs more leaders that do what is right instead of what is popular.

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By: cdagirl https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-23271 Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:37:17 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-23271 [quote]Zenesque said: “I find it strangely comforting, when I think about the impending doom of mankind. I like to think that nature will one day balance out the imbalances we have caused. We might not be quite untouchable and omnipotent.

The density of population increases continuously. We face inevitable natural disasters and wars. The survivors are often forced to live in conditions that are cramped and unsanitary. It is the perfect breeding ground for disease. When we add to the equation the fact that people can travel from anywhere in the world to any other place on the planet in less than a day, we have the ingredients for pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. I can hardly wait.

I have to admit that the people mentioned in this article were probably the right people in the right place at the right moment. I would not have thought that people could be so efficient. Usually things get a lot worse, before they get better. Perhaps we are finally beginning to learn. Better late, than never, I guess.”[/quote]

This is a happy thing for me to look forward to too! I just can’t wait for us to get what’s coming to us. It will be fun dying of disease. And I don’t mean this sarcastically. I know it’s a strange thing to look forward to, but I am a strange person, so what can I say?

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By: Anthropositor https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-22557 Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:55:17 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-22557 FUTURE PANDEMIC PREVENTION
I want to talk a bit about the good news with H5N1, the strain we currently fear the most, the one that has now shown a clear ability to cross species barriers into humans in triple digit numbers now, and the present day analogue of the strain that caused the world pandemic killing unknown millions at the close of the First World War.

It turns out that there are a number of survivors still living, some of them living with ages in the triple digits, having been older children during the epidemic when they contracted the disease. Our astute and sophisticated medical establishment apparently was not particularly interested in this fact until very recently. A fact which fails to surprise me.

Now though, the interest is keen. These unusually healthy and robust elders in our midst are now the objects of considerable attention, and are being gleefully probed for their blood in the very real hope and prospect that antibodies can be mass produced that will afford real protection even before a new outbreak gets out of control.

But frankly, I wonder how good it is for these centenarians to be jabbed for these samples.

The current procedure throughout the world is, a chicken or two in an industrial chicken house is positive for the virus, wipe out the infected chicken and the whole damn chicken house, many thousands of apparently healthy chickens. Destroyed. Buried. Burned. Who takes these losses? The farmer. Sort of gives him some incentive to button his lip and hope for the best, doesn’t it?

I wonder if it would not be a good idea, the next time their is an outbreak, to let it run its’ course through a very, very, very quarantined chicken house. Actually take the very best care of those chickens! (No, I don’t mean to treat the stricken ones in any way.) I just mean, feed them excellent rations and very good water, remove all corpses promptly, and see how many survivors there are.

Let us say that out of 10,000 chickens, 100 survived. Now you have a hundred chickens you could poke with needles to get some samples to make a vaccine with which a pharmaceutical company could them make billions of dollars. Ah, the wonders of private enterprise!

OR, you could even breed those survivor chickens, ultimately producing tens of thousands, even eventually millions or even billions of chickens, which were totally immune, not only to the deadly virulent strain, but also to a great variety of other common influenza’s. Apparently these aged survivors have, more often than not , not subsequently been troubled by colds or flu that they noticed. In other words, the original infection seems to have made the survivors a LOT healthier. Would it not be nice if we could make the entire chicken population of the planet much, much hardier and less prone to disease in general.

Naw, couldn’t work. Otherwise, one of those experts with all that formal training, all those diplomas and honors,in cooperation with all the high ranking health organization bureaucrats with their unique expertize om writing protocols and edicts and regulations… they would have already thought of it. Certainly, no self-taught bumpkin from the middle of nowhere could ever come up with anything valuable. What would people think?

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By: argosinfotech https://www.damninteresting.com/the-heroes-of-sars/#comment-22356 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:44:32 +0000 https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=952#comment-22356 Really very interesting :)

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