As I wrote about earlier, the more we learn, the worse it gets. Yesterday, it was an article published in the British medical journal Lancet, which estimated a mortality rate of 20% for SARS patients.
Today, the World Health Organization has estimated a mortality rate of 14-15% of all victims.
That average is elevated by very high mortality (55%) among the elderly, but even among the young and healthy, the mortality rate is 6% for ages 24-44. For comparison, flu/pnuemonia deaths in the US are about .024% for all age groups.
As for China, the number of cases reported continues to grow, with 159 new cases reported as of yesterday. The pace does not appear to be slowing, since the previous day saw 138 new cases. The scary part is that we have little or no information about what is going on in the rural areas of China.
Posted by Rich at May 8, 2003 1:21 PM | TrackBackSARS is scary. It is not so threatening once SARS mortality is broken down into age groups. The main stream news media organizations are playing to fear in order to boost their revenues.
No wonder people are misinformed and fearful.
Any flu which has a mortality rate of greater than 50% among the elderly is scary. When it has a mortality rate an order of magnitude higher among even younger age groups, it is very threatening.
Posted by: rich on June 9, 2003 1:11 AM