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WHO Overreacts?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
So, now that the war for Iraq is "over", all media attention is being focussed on SARS. This has only been helped by recent WHO pronouncements about Toronto and Beijing.
Current estimated infection figures suggest that 3,000 people in the world are infected with this disease. In a population of approx 6bn.
Additionally figures for Toronto suggest that there are 150 infected people, in a population of 6m.
So, are the WHO overreacting? As a conseqence are the media reporting in an hysterical manner? And are politicians going to overreact themselves as a result?
Current estimated infection figures suggest that 3,000 people in the world are infected with this disease. In a population of approx 6bn.
Additionally figures for Toronto suggest that there are 150 infected people, in a population of 6m.
So, are the WHO overreacting? As a conseqence are the media reporting in an hysterical manner? And are politicians going to overreact themselves as a result?
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Comments
The WHO may be overreacting, but better safe than sorry. This is quite a contagious disease with a mortality rate of approximately 4% (nowhere near as nasty as a hypothesised smallpox outbreak, but still quite dangerous), so you can understand them being cautious.
As for the media, they will of course overreact if they think it will win them more readers/viewers, and politicians will overreact if they think it will win them more votes. So yes, politicians probably are going to overreact.
For once, America won't be the focus of someone's anger because our Center For Disease Control said Toronto is safe to travel to.
I'd rather we'd error on the safe side.
Since Toronto is a city of 4 million and Canada only has 30 million people in it, this is throwing Canada into a recession.
On Yahoo:
Britain, France, Ireland, Australia and Jamaica already have issued warnings similar to the WHO advisory, and the impact was immediate. But the United States has not taken such steps.
Better to overreact, than try and do something after it has got out of hand
What about VRSA?
How about HIV? Should we be testing for this at our airports?
Better still TB, which is also mutating?
TB yes. There should be a screening program for everyone entering this country (I believe that illegal immigrants already are)
What about SARS?
The media hasn't in my humble opinion reported it in a hysterical manner.
There matter is there is a highly contagious killer disease spreading round the world and unless something is done it will continue, now I'm sorry if this interupted your holiday to China but if I or anyone I knew died because the government couldn't be arsed to quarantine people for a few days, I would be dammed pissed off.
You could breathe it in or if someone has touched something and left the virus on it and you touch it...even a day later...you could catch SARS. They know the virus lives at least 24 hours on the surface. I feel sorry for the people in Toronto but WHO was right.
How can illegal immigrants be screened? By their very nature they surely avoid going through the usual customs and border control procedures?
It's better to be safe that sorry, but while we're at it why don't we try and focus on maleria and other illnesses in the third world which kills millions, yet recieves very little money for research into finding a cure.
Why?
Why should we single some diseases out but not others?
As the author above says, little is done to combat malaria, but there are hundreds of other viral infections which we are happy to let into the country, so why single out SARS?
The reason many diseases are singled out is because it suits a political agenda. Some newspapers are trying to rally support for the whole anti-immigrant arguement by trying to create a massive hysteria. There has recently been a big fuss made over speculation that many of these people coming into the country may have TB and HIV.
The big fuss over Sars may just because the whole story of a mass pandemic waiting to happen makes a really good story (even if alot of it is speculation).
Kerching.
Thank you.
Media attention is the answer. They are hyping this disease into something it isn't - partly thanks to the WHO pronouncements. SARS is dangerous, no doubt about it, but so are stairs FFS and we don't only build bungalows. DO we?
Of course it did.
Do you ever feel like a Mushroom PNJ? Cos you certainly like being kept in the dark and being fed on shit...
Do you really think that your Govt would say anything else?
Now, Clandestine may be paranoid, but he's right when he suggests that you shouldn't swallow all that you are told. Often there is a reason that your Govt tells you things... so what message does that send? Perhaps that the panic over their bio-terrorism advice was worth it because look - you don't have a major outbreak of SARS - just like most countries in the world, who didn't go to such bio risk lengths ...
Link to the tons of concerts being canceled....including Elton Jon and Bill Joel.