Saturday, September 06, 2003
IT LOOKS LIKE SARS II IS COMING SOON
AND WILL BE CATASTROPHIC
Over the last few days there have been somber reports that suggest that SARS is percolating in two or more species of animals out there. They come on the heels of what was clearly an outbreak of SARS in British Columbia that was swept under the rug. The British Columbia outbreak showed that mild forms of SARS exist and that the virus is probably spreading silently in many places, waiting for cooler weather to show its deadly face. Even the CIA sees nothing but bad news down the road, according to reporting by Laurie Garrett.
Henry Niman, a Harvard professor who has turned into one of the nation's leading SARS intellectuals, has been warning that SARS has continued spreading in the months since the first epidemic seemed to have ended. He cites the rather abrupt end of the first epidemic as proof that the virus does it most serious pathological work during what is usually considered the flu season.
Reports in Science magazine that civet cats and racoon dogs in China seem to be infected with a nearly identical SARS virus have caused a great deal of alarm since the Chinese have not made an effort to control these animals. And they may just be the tip of the iceberg. Several months ago there there was a report that the virus was found in wild pigs in China. And this blog has pointed out the curious story by Gady Epstein which ran in the Baltimore Sun about a farm in Guangdong Province in which half of the pigs died from a mysterious fever during the same period as the SARS epidemic. If the SARS virus is now spreading through pigs in China, the next SARS epidemic could dwarf the first one.
AND WILL BE CATASTROPHIC
Over the last few days there have been somber reports that suggest that SARS is percolating in two or more species of animals out there. They come on the heels of what was clearly an outbreak of SARS in British Columbia that was swept under the rug. The British Columbia outbreak showed that mild forms of SARS exist and that the virus is probably spreading silently in many places, waiting for cooler weather to show its deadly face. Even the CIA sees nothing but bad news down the road, according to reporting by Laurie Garrett.
Henry Niman, a Harvard professor who has turned into one of the nation's leading SARS intellectuals, has been warning that SARS has continued spreading in the months since the first epidemic seemed to have ended. He cites the rather abrupt end of the first epidemic as proof that the virus does it most serious pathological work during what is usually considered the flu season.
Reports in Science magazine that civet cats and racoon dogs in China seem to be infected with a nearly identical SARS virus have caused a great deal of alarm since the Chinese have not made an effort to control these animals. And they may just be the tip of the iceberg. Several months ago there there was a report that the virus was found in wild pigs in China. And this blog has pointed out the curious story by Gady Epstein which ran in the Baltimore Sun about a farm in Guangdong Province in which half of the pigs died from a mysterious fever during the same period as the SARS epidemic. If the SARS virus is now spreading through pigs in China, the next SARS epidemic could dwarf the first one.
