SARS Attacks!

[GuyJean]

Japan Expands Travel Warnings
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/04/04/57972-ap.html

Earlier Friday, Japan's chief government spokesman said three more patients with SARS-like symptoms had been reported to health authorities, bringing the total number of possible cases to 17.

The government announced last month that seven people were suspected of having contracting the illness but later said it was a false alarm.

That's interesting.. Considering how things are covered up here, I would've thought it would be a 'non-alarm', not a 'false' one.

This worries me for a couple reasons:
- EVERYONE uses public transportation.
- NO ONE stays home from work when they're sick.

Possibly a helpful site: WHO SARS Update Page.
http://www.who.int/csr/sars/en/

I wore my first mask yesterday.. I felt like a goober.

GJ

[Steve Bildermann]

I wore my first mask yesterday.. I felt like a goober.

No. I believe the phrase you're looking for is 'I felt like a Fucked Gaijin'

[GuyJean]

No. I believe the phrase you're looking for is 'I felt like a Fucked Gaijin'

That's a given... Maybe 'Fucked Gaijin Goober', is more like it.

GJ

[Taro Toporific]

Considering how things are covered up here, I would've thought it would be a 'non-alarm', not a 'false' one.

This worries me for a couple reasons:
- EVERYONE uses public transportation.
- NO ONE stays home from work when they're sick.

Real-time Graph of SARS Epidemic

The slope of black curve implies that the number of reported cases of SARS in the United States will double every 7.2 days. The number will be 100,000 on about June 15, 2003. A million cases will be reached on about July 9, 2003, and ten million on about August 2, 2003. Note that the US cases appear to be doubling faster than the world rate. Either the US number of cases will double much more slowly in the future, or the world rate will double faster. The projected date for a million cases in the US is probably inaccurate.

[Big Booger]

I'm staying home and eating can goods.

[ramchop]

Japan has no SARS cases, gov't claims

Japan for now has no sufferers of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), with a health ministry panel saying Monday that cases earlier identified as "suspect" or "probable" turned out not to be the sometimes fatal atypical pneumonia.

Good luck more than good management I suspect.

My boss is off to Hong Kong to advise and reassure the resident Japanese there. Hope he doesn't bring anything nasty back with him.

[Taro Toporific]

I'm staying home and eating can goods.

We're Advising All Our Clients To ...
INVEST IN SHOTGUNS AND CANNED GOODS!

[were_spider]

"The Chinese fondness for animals and birds, and the proximity in which they live to them, provides ideal conditions for viruses to jump to humans. Reports last week suggested that the first cases of Sars in Guangzhou were seen among bird vendors and chefs. Bi Shengli, a virologist from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control, said: "Guangdong people like eating exotic animals and I don't find it a healthy practice."

It is not the only dubious tradition. As I watched a man buying scorpions, the woman serving him hawked a gob of sputum from her throat, lurched to her feet and spat expertly behind my heel. Spitting is as natural as sneezing here – bubbles of phlegm pepper the streets – and could be spreading the virus. Of such simple habits are global epidemics made. "

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=394455

another interesting link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2927695.stm

sheet mang...

were spider

[ramchop]

Sars 'spread by cockroaches'

Experts have a new theory on how the Sars illness raced through an entire apartment block in Hong Kong.

Sars spread at a HK apartment block baffled doctors
They believe that cockroaches may have carried the infection from flat to flat.

Is there a big cockroach problem in Tokyo? Maybe all the "ARSE" ads on TV at the moment have me paranoid.

[GuyJean]

WHO Identifies SARS Virus
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20030409wo31.htm

The virus was confirmed as a coronavirus after a powerful immune substance, effective against existing coronaviruses, inhibited growth of the SARS virus. Partial gene testing also confirmed that the SARS virus was related to the genus coronavirus.

But as the genetic sequence of the SARS virus was different from those of three existing groups of the genus, the SARS virus was determined to be a new type of coronavirus.

So, this is good news....?

Identifying is the first step, I suppose..

GJ

[ramchop]

So, this is good news....?

Identifying is the first step, I suppose..

It's an important step. At present identifying genuine cases is really difficult. Japan still hasn't been listed on the WHO website as most of their "suspected" cases have been discounted. However, three new "cases" were brought into the hospital I work at two nights ago.

There's no quick fire test. So a suspected case is: high temperature, coughing, been to China/Hong Kong recently.


Japan to send 2 doctors to Guangdong over SARS

My boss isn't overly concerned (he was more worried when the govt sent him to Uganda during an Ebola outbreak 3 years ago). Most deaths occur in the elderly and/or smokers. Another good reason to quit.

[tidbits]

sorry,not related to Japan tho.

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/topstories/0,4133,TopStories,00.html?

Business picks up because of cleaning firm is called SAR and also SARS has boosted up triumph bra sales in Singapore HDB residential area.

[tidbits]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030427a2.htm

International travellers decrease only by 30% in Golden Week. I hope there isn't any bad news after GW.

[Taro Toporific]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030427a2.htm
International travellers decrease only by 30% in Golden Week. I hope there isn't any bad news after GW.

My Tokyo to Chicago flight on Northwest Airlines originated in Shanghai.

The plane was full of RICH Chinese fleeing on looooooong vacations. The madame next to me asked me questions about bringing her LV purse full of gold blocks. I offered to help her spend it. Now. today I have a cough and sore throat.
WHAT ME WORRY?

[ramchop]

The plane was full of RICH Chinese fleeing on looooooong vacations. The madame next to me asked me questions about bringing her LV purse full of gold blocks. I offered to help her spend it. Now. today I have a cough and sore throat.

The correct procedure when confronted with a SARS infected Chinese is to remove them from your personal space as quickly as possible:

A man in Beijing's Fengtai district threw his Pekinese dog from the sixth floor of his apartment block because he suspected it might have Sars

I would have thought you'd have known this, now because of your lack of diligence all of Chicago is in danger.

[Taro Toporific]

The correct procedure when confronted with a SARS infected Chinese is to remove them from your personal space as quickly as possible:

A man in Beijing's Fengtai district threw his Pekinese dog from the sixth floor of his apartment block because he suspected it might have Sars

.

I'm real fruity, so it's ok homoeopathically

Allopaths, homoeopaths bicker over SARS treatment
Newindpress, India - 1 May
As the world struggles to contain the spreading SARS virus, allopathic and homoeopathic practitioners in Kerala are bickering over whose treatment is more effective against the killer pneumonia. .... a patient carrying SARS got cured using homoeopathy medicines in a matter of two weeks. The medicine used was carbo-vegetablis of 10 m-potency, which is derived from vegetable charcoal. One possible way to reduce this disease is the consumption of organic vegetables and fruit,"

[ramchop]

Yeah, that'll work. It's obviously doing wonders in Beijing.

Turnip prices have shot up in Beijing after the vegetable was recommended as a key ingredient in a broth to prevent the disease, Reuters news agency said.

"A lot of people want turnips," vegetable vendor Hu Benqiang was quoted by the agency.

[Taro Toporific]

It's baaaack.


First SARS case this season
China Post, Taiwan - 17 Dec
... Chen said the World Health Organization and infectious disease control authorities in the United States, Japan and Singapore will be notified of the first case ...

[ramchop]

Taiwanese health authorities are searching for five foreign air travellers who sat near a man later diagnosed with the deadly Sars virus.

The five - three US citizens, one Japanese and a Singaporean - were on a flight from Singapore to the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, eight days ago.

[Taro Toporific]

It's baaaack.

First SARS case this season

Nation on SARS alert, but calmAsahi Shimbun, Japan - Jan 7
Japanese authorities were on alert following confirmation Monday in China of the first case of SARS since last summer, but the pervading mood in Japan remains one of calm...

[ramchop]

China's latest Sars patient says he has never eaten a civet cat as the authorities in the southern province of Guangdong continue to slaughter thousands of the animals as an anti-Sars measure.

[ramchop]

The disease has also been linked to rats and the authorities in Guangdong now say that they will launch a rat extermination campaign after they have finished killing the civets.

In the interview with Xinhua, Mr Luo said he caught a baby mouse in the bath tub using a pair of chopsticks.

He described himself as an environmentalist opposed to the slaughter of living creatures, so he said he threw the animal out of a window.

Wonder if he's the same guy who threw his Pekinese dog from the sixth floor of his apartment block back in May.

[kamome]

Has anyone been following the slaughter of Chinese civet cats in the news? Really brutal, if you ask me. No one is even sure that these things are linked to SARS.

Picture of Chinese anti-SARS officials bludgeoning a helpless civet cat

[ramchop]

No one is even sure that these things are linked to SARS.

If they are you might want to cut down on gourmet Indonesian coffee.

Fears that Chinese civet cats may help to spread Sars have lead to thousands of the animals being slaughtered, but they do not seem to have affected demand for a rare coffee harvested with the animals' help in Indonesia.

"Kopi Luwak" or " Civet Coffee" is made with beans that have been partially digested and then excreted by civets.

[Caustic Saint]

If they are you might want to cut down on gourmet Indonesian coffee.

Fears that Chinese civet cats may help to spread Sars have lead to thousands of the animals being slaughtered, but they do not seem to have affected demand for a rare coffee harvested with the animals' help in Indonesia.

"Kopi Luwak" or " Civet Coffee" is made with beans that have been partially digested and then excreted by civets.

Indonesian civet cat? Is that like a Sumatran Rat Monkey?



(For 5 bonus points, name the director who brought this critter to the silver screen.)

[ramchop]

(For 5 bonus points, name the director who brought this critter to the silver screen.)

If a bite from that turns you into a Zombie, then too easy (and the solvents haven't totally dissolved my memory)

[Taro Toporific]

(For 5 bonus points, name the director who brought this critter to the silver screen.)

If a bite from that turns you into a Zombie, then too easy (and the solvents haven't totally dissolved my memory)

No fair Ramchop: it's a Kiwi flick! The ratmonkey is from Peter JACKSON's Braindead[1992]

Peter Jackson's magnum opus,"Dead Alive," which not only was commissioned by the government of New Zealand, but also holds the Guinness World Record for the most fake blood used in a single movie scene.
From a demonic rat-monkey whose origin is revealed by the following line, "story goes, these great big rats come scuttling off the slave ships and raped all the little tree monkeys", to a woman eating her own ear, "Dead Alive," has it all.
Heck, there's even a zombie baby. That's right, two zombies actually get it on during the movie, conceive and give birth before the movie even reaches the halfway point. And that's not even the best part.

[ramchop]

No fair Ramchop: it's a Kiwi flick! The ratmonkey is from Peter JACKSON's Braindead

A much better title than what you got lumbered with in America.

vs

[Taro Toporific]

China's latest Sars patient says he has never eaten a civet cat ....

Farms in south of China ever ripe for pandemic
PETRI DISH: Small, squalid farms teeming with fetid animals are widely believed to make densely populated areas in Asia cauldrons for lethal new diseasesREUTERS , NANZHENCUN, CHINA
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004, Page 5
.... Chen, 45, boasts that he has never fallen sick on the farm. But his lifestyle is the sort that makes epidemiologists cringe. He lives beside a mucky pond in a tree bark cabin abutting a corrugated steel shelter, where the ducks waddle up the banks to feed and scatter their droppings on the way down.... Ideally, the farmer would build some distance between him and his ducks. But he insists monster rats would have a feeding frenzy at night if he lived any further away.
Small farms like his, squalid and teeming with fetid animals, are widely believed to make southern China and other densely populated areas across Asia cauldrons for lethal new flu strains...a triangle of contagion linking man, bird and swine.
As the theory goes, viruses of farmers and fowl may co-mingle or trade genes. An avian flu by-product can then incubate in pigs, which in turn re-infect humans.
Farmers and traders go on to mix with city folk who hop the globe by jet, while trucks haul their teeming flocks to faraway locales.
"A pandemic influenza is certainly much bigger than SARS," said microbiologist Malik Peiris, a SARS expert at the University of Hong Kong.

[Taro Toporific]

It's baaaack!

Sars.jpeg

Is a New SARS-like Virus Spreading in the Middle East?
Forbes.com | 11/24/2012
As with most emerging epidemics, we usually ignore them until people start dying. If the same logic applies here, it’s time to begin paying attention to the new SARS-like virus found in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While only six cases have been identified so far, two of the patients died, suggesting that the survival rate isn’t stellar...the World Health Organization (WHO) originally  issued an international alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.
On Friday, November 23, the WHO said in an outbreak update that it had registered four more cases and one of the new patients had died.
"The additional cases have been identified as part of the enhanced surveillance in Saudi Arabia (3 cases, including 1 death) and Qatar (1 case),"the WHO statement said.
The new virus is a coronavirus with similar symptoms to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which emerged in China in 2002 ...more...

sars_girl.jpeg