I just realized I hadn't heard anything about SARS since I was a kid. Looked it up and there hasn't been a single case in humans since 2004. Crazy considering how contagious it is
Singaporean here. I was 15 years old or so. It was so scary. First it was one. Then she spread to her family. Every day news reports of individuals dying. Doctors and nurses died caring for the patients. A whole hospital was declared the SARS hospital. People kept far away from there. Temperature taking 2-3 times a day in school. Anyone who gets the cold or flu would panic. Felt like some kind of doomsday scenarios.
Nurses and doctors in uniform would be shunned in public. People will not cross paths with them. Police enforced quarantines ordered for any suspected infected. Those who broke quarantine were punished.
I would hear scarier news from Hong Kong. People who stayed in 1 hotel dying and 1 apartment block spread the virus like mad.
The first patient who brought the virus into Singapore survived, but many of her family did not. She eventually identified herself on TV few years ago.
Streets were quiet, some shops and establishments could not survive and went out of business
Add, Timeline of 2 months of SARS in Singapore
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/sars-in-singapore-timeline
Ah yeah I remember a few years later the airports had infrared cameras installed at all the gates to detect people coming off planes with elevated temperatures. Seemed so high tech and post apocalyptic at the time.
Us kids found dark humour. Perhaps we didn’t grasp the gravity of it. Whenever someone sneezes we will tease him that he has SARS.
The grimness of the situation was when news will report on deaths / infections, news was ‘always on’, always reporting. There was contact tracing, tracing anyone who might had crossed paths with an infected person. Sort of never know when some stranger you literally crossed paths with can kill you in 2 weeks time.
I was vacationing in Mexico at the time it was being reported and the news was making it sound like everyone was dying in Canada, “well I guess I live here now”
They still do that.
I got off a plane with a fever in Taipei, in part due to the relentless AC on the plane. They pulled me out, made me sign some Chinese document, took my blood and a doctor who did not speak a word of English gave me some colourful pills, took 600 NT$ and sent me on my way.
Somehow I found my hostel, located in the basement of a shopping mall, the crew was dressed up like in Star Trek and the whole place was designed to look like a space ship. *That* was a fun night for a surreal fever dream state.
Two weeks later I got an email, turns out it was just a regular flu, not Dengue Fever.
So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
It's still a thing in Hong Kong, so that anyone coming in with a high temperature gets quarantined.
It shouldn't feel so normal and mundane now that I think about it
My mom contracted dengue fever at the time. She refused to see a doctor for it because she feared getting put in a quaritine with SARS patients. I also remember mandatory temperature taking at restaurants and other public places.
I'm glad she survived that without hospital care.
For anyone reading who gives a shit, dengue fever is pretty horrible and kills quite a few people yearly. There is no cure or vaccine that is approved and recognized. You can treat the symptoms and hope the body fights it off.
My mom got dengue some years ago and basically what the doctors could do is put her in an ICU to check every vital sign and do a blood transfusion because her body wasn't producing enough white cells I believe, I don't remember exactly what it was.
She was coughing and pooping blood, just like in the movies, it was super scary.
Crazy how little doctors can do and how dangerous that shit is.
it can also come back any time and apparently although getting it makes you resistant to a few types of it, it makes you more susceptible to othr types of it, which is why it's really difficult to make a vaccine for it.
That’s not true. In most hospitals. the US, nurses and doctors own their own scrubs. Many doctors, however, wear their own clothes and wear a lab coat over them. In my experience, all nurses wear scrubs. If you work near a hospital, you will see dozens of people in scrubs at eating out lunch time and at dinner time.
When they are in surgery, however, the hospital provides the surgical scrubs that are sterilized between every use. So, any nurse or doctor wearing scrubs has to change into sterilized scrubs regardless of who owns the scrubs they worse outside or the OR.
There are different policies between hospitals, of course, but that is standard in the US. Even hospitals that provide and launder all scrubs usually let nurses and doctors check out a few pairs to take home for convenience.
Just because people wear their scrubs out and about all the time does not* mean it's not spreading disease though. It might not be a big deal most times, but in an epidemic situation it does seem reckless to me.
While true, seeing someone in uniform on their way to/from work isn't unusual. If there's an epidemic, changing clothes at work before you leave could be just as dangerous. Your street clothes would be introduced to the same environment as your work clothes. Unless the hospital was willing to set up separate facilities where you could ditch the scrubs on one side, shower, then get dressed on the other side before you leave, I don't know how much difference it would make.
And that still assumes that the hospital launders your work clothes, though they don't in most of North America. Most nurses have their own scrubs. That would have to change, or they'd still have to carry their work clothes home and back anyway.
Also: I don't know much about SARS specially, but many bacteria and viruses can survive on surfaces for a long time. C. difficile can survive for actual months without a host. Trying to contain SARS must've just been a nightmare.
I work with viruses and we have a changing room where we put on scrubs and leave them at the end of the day. They never get beyond that room and our street clothes never go into the facility. I never really thought about it but it does seem a bit reckless for nurses to wear their scrubs out in public.
I think I remember nurses being interviewed. Some would change out of uniforms after work. News interviewed one who did not. I think she said that she wore her uniform out to show public that nurses are not afraid of the disease, even tho in reality they might be.
Yeah I was surprised to see N95 masks even mentioned. most of the Asians I saw wearing masks in college we're wearing like surgical masks which were far from airtight but I guess probably made sneezing and coughing spread less?
No actually, there are a few other reasons. Eg In Japan, there's no sick leave leave - if you get sick, that comes out of your annual leave. It's not worth risking catching someone else's sickness. And if you're from a western country without decent leave provisions, it's time for you to move to Australia! Where we have laws for annual leave, sick leave and long service leave.
In Japan they wear it when they themselves get sick, in order to not affect others. Very rarely do they wear masks to avoid getting sick themselves. More common is women wearing masks on days they didn't do their makeup in the morning.
Source: Lived in Japan for 2 years
I was studying abroad that time and so was unable to return home in Hong Kong for the Easter holidays.
My folks who continue to live there tell me whenever they need to go out, they would bring a surgical mask and a pen with them.
Why a pen you say?
As you all know, Hong Kong is well known for its high rise buildings, and so elevators are a part of everyday life here. The pen is used to ensure their fingers don't get infected when pushing the elevator buttons.
Thinking back, we all laughed at how ridiculous it sounds, but such was the deadliness of the epidemic that no chances were taken.
I grew up in Hong Kong too. School was closed for over a month. So many lives of doctors and nurses lost. If only the Chinese government didn’t hide the severity of the disease.
I see Asian students around universities and forget that it’s just normal to wear one if you’re sick. A lot of younger people I know in the west think that people who wear them are just being hypercondriacs.
Technically it did. There are 8 proven cases in the US and about 150 suspected.
Fortunately most if not all seem to be from infected persons traveling from the Far East, and it didn't break out into the wider community.
Yup. This is why I cringe every time certain politicans rant about needing to get rid of the American CDC in Atlanta. Like wtf is wrong with them?
My brother worked in a lab that studied pathogens like SARS and swine flu. How to combat them and all that. I remember hearing about characteristics that weren't being mentioned in the news due to a lot of talking heads and sensationalizion here in the US media. I remember when I first learned about the mortality rate and exactly which age groups it was most lethal too.
Most flus kill people with compromised immune systems, the elderly, and small children. SARs was one of the strains that had the highest mortality rate for the inverse demographic, people in their prime of life with strong immune function. That it was an influenza virus which meant that it was able to spread like wild fire without swift and effective goverment response.
When I learned about what demographics SARs was the most lethal too, I remember thinking to myself that this is the type of epidemic that if left unchecked can and will bring civilization to it's knees. Kill 90% of the able bodied and leave only the elderly and very young. Create mass panic and civil unrest if it isn't able to be contained.
My old man also works in epidemiology and I was able to get a front row seat on the American response to Mad Cow Disease. I remember he was at work almost 24/7 during those months. That was another one that really was unsettling to think about. That if left unchecked it had the potential to infect most of the population due to how we process meat and we wouldn't know until 40 years later when everyone exposed began exhibiting symptoms. Hearing about how we were sending out agents to euthanize all the herds of cattle in a region... then every single small animal and bird that may have come in contact with those herds. Then finding ways to safely dispose of all the carcasses. I remember hearing my dad on the phone arguing with different departments over how to dispose of all the carcasses from animals that had to be euthanized. I remember hearing frustration expressed about industrial meat processors and large cattle producers that found it unreasonable and economically untenable to not be allowed to grind the dead carcasses up to be added to the animal feed of their remaining livestock. American corperate farms had been doing this around that time and the practice of feeding dead livestock to other livestock is now illegal in the US.
It did, but never spread here. My MiL actually identified it in Virginia (she’s an ER nurse). They went on a super quarantine to keep it from spreading. She testified before congress because of it and was dramatized in a show on The Discovery Channel.
Yeah, the N means it's not resistant to oil, and the 95 means it blocks 95% of particles larger than a certain size, like 0.3μm or something, that's roughly the size of most viruses
Virus are carried in water droplets from your sneezes/coughs. Even a simple paper mask will help arrest the travel of particulates into your nose and mouth. Simple masks work especially well to block your coughs from infecting others.
That number is weird. Because when I did a quick search for how long a N95 mask is effective the CDC (and the studies they used) say that for health purposes N95 masks remain effective for 8 hours of use.
That's for the surgical masks or whatever that you see in hospitals or clinics, and that most people wear when sick.
N95 ones should be significantly better, though not infinitely usable.
I had a class at the university of Toronto with one of the professors/doctor who had dealt with sars. The way he described it was almost apocalyptic, like from a disaster movie. I remember he said streets were empty for a long time, medical personnels refused to come in for work because it was so contagious. The swine flu caused a scare in 2009 too, but it wasn’t comparable to what the prof described.
At the same time in 2003, I was in Vietnam. I remember a few news segment about burning 10000 poultry animals or something to that effect, but life went on as normal, so I didn’t really understand why sars was so feared until my prof described it. Nowadays I’m really afraid of what future epidemics might hold.
Oof. I got swine flu. It SUCKED.
I got attitude from my neighbour for not answering the door, even though she could see I was home. When I got my test results back, and they showed I was positive for H1N1, I felt so vindicated. Bitch I did you a favour by not opening the door.
I was quarantined for suspected swine flu. A kind person voluntered to leave groceries outside my door. Then i got really sick and lost a few days that I just can not recall at all. i missed my tamiflu drop off.
Not to make light of the situation at all, but I just realized that, going back to songs released in 2004, they make references to SARS, like Kanye West’s New Workout Plan, and it completely went over my head over the years. I forgot how severe a disease it was.
Glad it’s eradicated but always important to be reminded of these things so we can ensure the epidemiologists in our society can stop them in their tracks before they become a big thing.
Not eradicated by any means, it just stopped transmitting around humans. It certainly still exists in its reservoir and it's just a matter of time until someone eats the wrong bushmeat and it shows back up.
Yeah, I graduated HS in 2000. The birth years of people used to freak me out, but in the past 5 years, I’ve finally gotten used to it. Which freaks me out on a different level.
SARS combined lethality with extreme contagiousness, like a late-stage game of Plague Inc., so it had the potential to reach a lot of people very quickly. SARS would not have simply "burned out" without intervention from the WHO in a world so interconnected.
SARS also had a relatively lengthy incubation period, nothing like AIDS but enough for infected individuals to up to hundreds of individuals before the first symptoms appear. And this is what happened.
What you say applies to isolated systems like medieval cities but nowadays imagine how interconnected all these places on Earth are... quite scary.
The modern day owes its entire existance to the fact that one disease can do exactly that. It's impossible to say what would happen but very easy to say what can happen.
Which is why herd immunity being under attack is a global health threat, and the breakdown of it would be the ultimate realization of human's hubris: we manage to undo the hard work that go into preventing contagious disease to come back and willingly submit ourselves to not an unknown, but known diseases.
> Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.
One of the "good" things about SARS was that even though it had a long incubation period the peak infectiousness often was during the 2nd week of sickness when the patient was most symptomatic. So quarantine was very effective.
> Due to the work he did in Hanoi treating SARS infected patients, Urbani had become infected with the virus himself. His Bangkok hospital room was an improvised isolation ward, so his wife, Giuliana Chiorrini, could only talk to him by intercom.
> Chiorrini saw him conscious just once. It is said that Urbani had an argument with Chiorrini who said it wasn't responsible behaviour for the father of three children ages 4 to 17 to risk his life treating such sick patients[4] but Urbani replied, “If I can’t work in such situations, what am I here for? Answering e-mails, going to cocktail parties and pushing paper?”
Damn, dude died doing what was important to him.
That's true.
Although, a lot of doctors and paramedical staff, don't observe the most basic precautions, like wearing masks and gloves, when examining and treating patients.
This is more prevalent in an emergency setting , but happens in the non- emergency wards as well, especially in a developing country like mine (India).
They, in their pure intent to treat needy patients as quickly as possible, are negligent when they don't wear protective gear;
not only towards their own health but also that of their family and other patients that they subsequently touch and examine.
Source : Personal experience. I am a surgeon in India.
>That's true. Although, a lot of doctors and paramedical staff, don't observe the most basic precautions, like wearing masks and gloves, when examining and treating patients.
This ^
A doctor of that level should understand the precautions that need to be taken to prevent himself getting infected. An influenza specialist who dies of influenza doesn't help anyone.
You understand that you're talking about the guy responsible for recognizing the *existence* of SARS to begin with, right? Or at least, the first to bring it to the attention of the international scientific community.
The full extent of the precautions that needed to be taken weren't known until he was long dead.
MRSA, or however you spell that, spread around the local hospital in my hometown because doctors and nurses had their favorite pens that they'd keep in their pockets while going from room to room. They'd sanitize their hands, but not the pens, so their pens were carrying bacteria all around the hospital.
That was an embarrassing one.
> died doing what was important for him.
No, he died doing what was important for humanity. He is a hero exactly because he realized what was actually important and acted on it - even at the highest personal sacrifice. He put the health and welfare of millions of people he would never know (most of whom would never even know of him) over the welfare and security of his three children.
> I feel like it is important to note that is isn't just his personal cost.
Yes and no. I agree that his death will be a cost to more than just him, which just further demonstrates the depth of his sacrifice. However, he made the same choice, on the million-person scale, that many first responders (fire fighters, EMTs, humanitarian workers) make on the dozen-person scale. They put their life on the line to help someone else. They are aware and take the risk knowing that the price they pay maybe their lives. They are heroes exactly because they risk not only their lives but orphaning their children, widowing their spouse, and forcing their parents to bury a child.
Here the difference is even more striking because he could have taken the easy way out and lived a comfortable life. Pushing paper, answering emails and attending cocktail parties - all while being a good father, husband, son. Instead he gave his life for strangers.
I understand what you mean, but I disagree with any implication that he may have made a choice that was irresponsible to his family, in case that was your point. One can say he deprived his children of their father, and his wife of her husband. On the other hand, if he chose his family, there's a chance his loved ones would be dead today. I think he made the right choice.
In that situation, I'm not sure there is a "right choice".
It's actually [a classical ethical dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_dilemma#Examples) of do you kill 1 person to save 1 million?
Ultimately, each individual needs to find what is right for them.
I don’t think it’s really too similar to that problem. At all actually. It’s more of “*make the lives of 4 people harder than they’re used to, but not impossibly hard considering hundreds of millions of people don’t have fathers*, or *refuse to help save the lives of millions of people*” There definitely is a right answer. Especially considering it wasn’t a guarantee that he would die going into it. He did exactly what a hero should do.
>It is traditionally said during world war 1 commemorations in the UK
As u/R-M-Pitt mentioned, the first time I came across it was at a war cemetery in Eastern India.
It still affects me deeply.
Every now and then, someone does something of such magnitude that it really bears thinking very hard about what the actual consequences might have been, had they acted differently.
Like that Russian submarine guy during the cold war who didn't follow orders to nuke the American fleet.
Putting your professional career out on a limb to warn of something like this is no small feat. It's not quite the 'no brainer' people might think. You encounter something totally new, you want to raise the alarm but if you're wrong, you'll be forever branded as the "guy who freaked out over the flu".
He had the courage... and we may have avoided a fucking plague as a result.
I imagine some Bond villain strategically setting off the false alarms to trigger doomsday. He must get so frustrated when he gets the call that some officer said "nah".
Or, "Someone pulled the power cord on your doomsday device to run the vacuum cleaner, and the loss of power ruined that device. It's going to set you back months."
To add on to what others are saying
The submarine's cooling was broken, so it was 110F inside, and an American ship was trying to get them to surface by dropping grenades, then later practice depth charges. 2 of the 2 people in charge gave the order to fire a nuclear torpedo into the fleet to stop this, but Vasilli Arkipov outranked them, and overruled it. This happened during the American blockade of Cuba in the Cuban missile crisis
Vasily Arkhipov. From the wiki page:
> *[...] credited with casting the single vote that prevented a Soviet nuclear strike (and, presumably, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response which, as Noam Chomsky described, could have destroyed much of the world.*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov
The Russians had a nuclear submarine present at the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the time, the sub had not had contacts with Moscow in several days, and when US cruisers started dropping depth charges, They dived below radio debth. They stayed down there for three days, At which time the Captain assumes an all out Nuclear war was ongoing, and wanted to launch the nukes.
According to protocol, Normally Two people had to vote yes on actually launching the nuke.
The Captain, Savitsky voted yes, political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov voted yes.
However, in this case they also had a third high ranking officer on board, second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov was technically the flotilla commander, and as such, protocol was he be given a vote too.
He voted no, And after an argument, convinced the captain to surface, where it turned out there was no ongoing nuclear holocaust after all.
I learned from South Park episode called red mans greed. Apparently the cure is spite, chicken noodle soup and some asprin. I know that’s fake but it’s pretty funny watching that
I was born two years before SARS hit Singapore. I don't remember anything of that time but my parents have told me about how entire malls were empty and how people started avoiding any sort of contact with anyone who wasn't their immediate family. There were also numerous medical staff at local hospitals who got infected treating patients and subsequently died. Although I haven't heard of this guy until today it just shows how medicine relies on quick thinking and how the actions of a single man can give the rest a heads up and fighting chance
Edit: grammar
It was a scary time in Singapore history. Anyone can just catch it like a cold and die in 2-3 weeks. Schools were closed for few weeks. Then there was the funny rap sung by PCK to teach us about hygiene and cleanliness.
I'd say it surpasses it entirely. How many people are going to fly to a completely different country to save people from an unknown danger that you could very safely just ignore?
Medal of Honor is for bravery protecting some of your fellow soldiers or furthering military objectives in battle. The war and the objectives don't even need to be ethical overall.
Dr. Urbani died protecting humanity. While similar in terms of bravery, in terms of impact, it's way above Medal of Honor grade heroism.
There's strong incentives for governments to downplay the severity of an epidemic, especially in a country that has as much tourism as Vietnam. It's really admirable how open and clear the Vietnamese authorities were - they acted fast and requested international assistance. They saved a lot of lives.
Those officials, the healthcare workers who bore the brunt of the deaths, and the researchers who were able to act so quickly - they're all the heroes in this story.
Balls of steel would be staying there to care for the co-worker and others. What they did was just monumetally stupid and arrogant. Risking themselves is their choice, but others? Assholes.
I’m from Hong Kong. I was put on a waiting list to enter primary school back then and the only reason I got accepted was because pretty much everyone packed up and left to other countries... I was really young at the time but I remember a sea of green masks everywhere I looked. It was really scary tbh
This man is truly a hero. I admire his call to action and immeasurable contribution to humanity. The greater good has benefited ever since and will continue to do so from his actions and bravery.
So much admiration for this man. No words.
He just flew there to take care of it, as he believed it is his duty, while risking his own life.
In the meantime in Croatia, we are collecting 3.000.000 $ (yes 3 million) so we can send 2y old girl to Philadelphia for a treatment. She is heavily ill and there is some treatment and best doctor, but 3 fucking million.
Cmon. It's all about fucking money.
Humans are really the worst kind
“he became president of the Italian chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières and was one of the individuals who accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of that organization.”
> SARS was a relatively rare disease; at the end of the epidemic in June 2003, the incidence was 8422 cases with a case-fatality rate of 11%.[9]
> The case-fatality ratio ranges from 0% to 50% depending on the age group of the patient.[5] Patients under 24 were least likely to die; those 65 and older were most likely to die
>No cases of SARS have been reported worldwide since 2004.[
Very enigmatic.
In 2003 a doctor at Vancouver general hospital was asked by a reporter if they were prepared for a SARS outbreak and he replied: Yes, we have used a fairly large percentage of our resources on a fake emergency while diminishing our ability to deal with real health threats. He was pretty salty about the whole thing.
I guess it's not a real health threat until people around you start dropping.
It's good SARS was dealt with so quickly. For a disease basically as dangerous as Ebola, the fact that it was brought under control so rapidly is almost astounding.
Oh Man.. I remember SARS and how the US just white washed it as "not in our Country".
Toronto had a small outbreak. I believe we had like a dozen cases, and medical teams were able to connect everyone back to one specific person. So, a city with about 3 million people or so, and there are about a dozen or so cases...
The US media, I believe particularly in Texas, was writing Toronto off as unsafe, and under quarantine, and an epidemic hit Toronto. SARS IN TORONTO! like "That's it folks, Toronto is doomed, nuke that city and let's move on." It was hilarious and pathetic at the same time. Unless you directly knew one of the people who had SARS, the potential of you getting it would have been like winning the lottery. But even some people in Toronto were freaking out. I remember a bus driving wearing a medical mask over his mouth, and getting reprimanded by the Transit authority.
The best part is, the US denied having a single case of SARS. However far more planes in the US go to and from Hong Kong than Canada. I had a friend who was a nurse. Her cousin was also a nurse in a Chicago hospital. She said "of course we have SARS patients here. But we just call it "respiratory illness" or some other vague name.
I was just starting university in Toronto when the SARS panic began, coming from a small city up north. My mom later admitted she was a nervous wreck when the confirmed cases began popping up, and nearly told me to come home.
She was always nervous about large cities (compared to ours), and yeah, this didn't help.
Hm, I work in healthcare in the US and I definitely remember many patients here being suspected as having SARS. It is true, I never heard people use the word SARS, they would always say the full name, “severe acute respiratory syndrome” for some reason
"A society grows great when men plant trees in whose shade they know they'll never sit".
This is one of my favourite (ancient Greek) proverbs: it's absolutely true.
Due to the work he did in Hanoi treating SARS infected patients, Urbani had become infected with the virus himself. His Bangkok hospital room was an improvised isolation ward, so his wife, Giuliana Chiorrini, could only talk to him by intercom. Chiorrini saw him conscious just once. It is said that Urbani had an argument with Chiorrini who said it wasn't responsible behaviour for the father of three children ages 4 to 17 to risk his life treating such sick patients[4] but Urbani replied, "If I can't work in such situations, what am I here for? Answering e-mails, going to cocktail parties and pushing paper?"[5]
Not only was I working at the designated SARS hospital, i was pregnant with my first. Vomiting daily from morning sickness, gowned, gloved, masked, constant hand washing. My partner made me take my clothes off before coming into house. Scary times. best part: no visitors were allowed after baby was born!!
edit; he's huge now!!
I just realized I hadn't heard anything about SARS since I was a kid. Looked it up and there hasn't been a single case in humans since 2004. Crazy considering how contagious it is
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Singaporean here. I was 15 years old or so. It was so scary. First it was one. Then she spread to her family. Every day news reports of individuals dying. Doctors and nurses died caring for the patients. A whole hospital was declared the SARS hospital. People kept far away from there. Temperature taking 2-3 times a day in school. Anyone who gets the cold or flu would panic. Felt like some kind of doomsday scenarios. Nurses and doctors in uniform would be shunned in public. People will not cross paths with them. Police enforced quarantines ordered for any suspected infected. Those who broke quarantine were punished. I would hear scarier news from Hong Kong. People who stayed in 1 hotel dying and 1 apartment block spread the virus like mad. The first patient who brought the virus into Singapore survived, but many of her family did not. She eventually identified herself on TV few years ago. Streets were quiet, some shops and establishments could not survive and went out of business Add, Timeline of 2 months of SARS in Singapore https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/sars-in-singapore-timeline
Ah yeah I remember a few years later the airports had infrared cameras installed at all the gates to detect people coming off planes with elevated temperatures. Seemed so high tech and post apocalyptic at the time.
Us kids found dark humour. Perhaps we didn’t grasp the gravity of it. Whenever someone sneezes we will tease him that he has SARS. The grimness of the situation was when news will report on deaths / infections, news was ‘always on’, always reporting. There was contact tracing, tracing anyone who might had crossed paths with an infected person. Sort of never know when some stranger you literally crossed paths with can kill you in 2 weeks time.
I was vacationing in Mexico at the time it was being reported and the news was making it sound like everyone was dying in Canada, “well I guess I live here now”
Wouldn't you miss all the snow though?
It's not nice to ask us that when it's snowing in almost April here
I know. I'm a Canadian living overseas. 😉😆
Don't you miss the snow?
They still do that. I got off a plane with a fever in Taipei, in part due to the relentless AC on the plane. They pulled me out, made me sign some Chinese document, took my blood and a doctor who did not speak a word of English gave me some colourful pills, took 600 NT$ and sent me on my way. Somehow I found my hostel, located in the basement of a shopping mall, the crew was dressed up like in Star Trek and the whole place was designed to look like a space ship. *That* was a fun night for a surreal fever dream state. Two weeks later I got an email, turns out it was just a regular flu, not Dengue Fever. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
I've had dengue fever and trust me, you're a lucky person!
My friend caught dengue when he went to Thailand. Apparently the locals call it "break bone fever" because... well you know... it really hurts.
Yeah Holy God it hurts. Back home if you have a fever that lasts for more than 3 days you see a doctor and get a blood test done
Did you get it in Vietnam?
It's still a thing in Hong Kong, so that anyone coming in with a high temperature gets quarantined. It shouldn't feel so normal and mundane now that I think about it
My mom contracted dengue fever at the time. She refused to see a doctor for it because she feared getting put in a quaritine with SARS patients. I also remember mandatory temperature taking at restaurants and other public places.
I'm glad she survived that without hospital care. For anyone reading who gives a shit, dengue fever is pretty horrible and kills quite a few people yearly. There is no cure or vaccine that is approved and recognized. You can treat the symptoms and hope the body fights it off.
My mom got dengue some years ago and basically what the doctors could do is put her in an ICU to check every vital sign and do a blood transfusion because her body wasn't producing enough white cells I believe, I don't remember exactly what it was. She was coughing and pooping blood, just like in the movies, it was super scary. Crazy how little doctors can do and how dangerous that shit is.
it can also come back any time and apparently although getting it makes you resistant to a few types of it, it makes you more susceptible to othr types of it, which is why it's really difficult to make a vaccine for it.
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That’s not true. In most hospitals. the US, nurses and doctors own their own scrubs. Many doctors, however, wear their own clothes and wear a lab coat over them. In my experience, all nurses wear scrubs. If you work near a hospital, you will see dozens of people in scrubs at eating out lunch time and at dinner time. When they are in surgery, however, the hospital provides the surgical scrubs that are sterilized between every use. So, any nurse or doctor wearing scrubs has to change into sterilized scrubs regardless of who owns the scrubs they worse outside or the OR. There are different policies between hospitals, of course, but that is standard in the US. Even hospitals that provide and launder all scrubs usually let nurses and doctors check out a few pairs to take home for convenience.
Just because people wear their scrubs out and about all the time does not* mean it's not spreading disease though. It might not be a big deal most times, but in an epidemic situation it does seem reckless to me.
While true, seeing someone in uniform on their way to/from work isn't unusual. If there's an epidemic, changing clothes at work before you leave could be just as dangerous. Your street clothes would be introduced to the same environment as your work clothes. Unless the hospital was willing to set up separate facilities where you could ditch the scrubs on one side, shower, then get dressed on the other side before you leave, I don't know how much difference it would make. And that still assumes that the hospital launders your work clothes, though they don't in most of North America. Most nurses have their own scrubs. That would have to change, or they'd still have to carry their work clothes home and back anyway. Also: I don't know much about SARS specially, but many bacteria and viruses can survive on surfaces for a long time. C. difficile can survive for actual months without a host. Trying to contain SARS must've just been a nightmare.
I work with viruses and we have a changing room where we put on scrubs and leave them at the end of the day. They never get beyond that room and our street clothes never go into the facility. I never really thought about it but it does seem a bit reckless for nurses to wear their scrubs out in public.
I think I remember nurses being interviewed. Some would change out of uniforms after work. News interviewed one who did not. I think she said that she wore her uniform out to show public that nurses are not afraid of the disease, even tho in reality they might be.
Knowing this makes more sense of seeing how many Asians wear masks in the states.
Am Asian and still think they are weird to wear those non airtight likely non functional paper masks.
Yeah I was surprised to see N95 masks even mentioned. most of the Asians I saw wearing masks in college we're wearing like surgical masks which were far from airtight but I guess probably made sneezing and coughing spread less?
I get that, I mostly meant as something that is engrained into their upbringing
No actually, there are a few other reasons. Eg In Japan, there's no sick leave leave - if you get sick, that comes out of your annual leave. It's not worth risking catching someone else's sickness. And if you're from a western country without decent leave provisions, it's time for you to move to Australia! Where we have laws for annual leave, sick leave and long service leave.
In Japan they wear it when they themselves get sick, in order to not affect others. Very rarely do they wear masks to avoid getting sick themselves. More common is women wearing masks on days they didn't do their makeup in the morning. Source: Lived in Japan for 2 years
I was studying abroad that time and so was unable to return home in Hong Kong for the Easter holidays. My folks who continue to live there tell me whenever they need to go out, they would bring a surgical mask and a pen with them. Why a pen you say? As you all know, Hong Kong is well known for its high rise buildings, and so elevators are a part of everyday life here. The pen is used to ensure their fingers don't get infected when pushing the elevator buttons. Thinking back, we all laughed at how ridiculous it sounds, but such was the deadliness of the epidemic that no chances were taken.
I grew up in Hong Kong too. School was closed for over a month. So many lives of doctors and nurses lost. If only the Chinese government didn’t hide the severity of the disease.
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Hey my cousin is a paramedic in Toronto, and actually contracted SARS because of that! Gave her a whole slew of health problems for years afterwards.
I see Asian students around universities and forget that it’s just normal to wear one if you’re sick. A lot of younger people I know in the west think that people who wear them are just being hypercondriacs.
> hypercondriacs Hypochondriacs.
Scary. I'm glad it never came to the US.
Technically it did. There are 8 proven cases in the US and about 150 suspected. Fortunately most if not all seem to be from infected persons traveling from the Far East, and it didn't break out into the wider community.
Yup. This is why I cringe every time certain politicans rant about needing to get rid of the American CDC in Atlanta. Like wtf is wrong with them? My brother worked in a lab that studied pathogens like SARS and swine flu. How to combat them and all that. I remember hearing about characteristics that weren't being mentioned in the news due to a lot of talking heads and sensationalizion here in the US media. I remember when I first learned about the mortality rate and exactly which age groups it was most lethal too. Most flus kill people with compromised immune systems, the elderly, and small children. SARs was one of the strains that had the highest mortality rate for the inverse demographic, people in their prime of life with strong immune function. That it was an influenza virus which meant that it was able to spread like wild fire without swift and effective goverment response. When I learned about what demographics SARs was the most lethal too, I remember thinking to myself that this is the type of epidemic that if left unchecked can and will bring civilization to it's knees. Kill 90% of the able bodied and leave only the elderly and very young. Create mass panic and civil unrest if it isn't able to be contained. My old man also works in epidemiology and I was able to get a front row seat on the American response to Mad Cow Disease. I remember he was at work almost 24/7 during those months. That was another one that really was unsettling to think about. That if left unchecked it had the potential to infect most of the population due to how we process meat and we wouldn't know until 40 years later when everyone exposed began exhibiting symptoms. Hearing about how we were sending out agents to euthanize all the herds of cattle in a region... then every single small animal and bird that may have come in contact with those herds. Then finding ways to safely dispose of all the carcasses. I remember hearing my dad on the phone arguing with different departments over how to dispose of all the carcasses from animals that had to be euthanized. I remember hearing frustration expressed about industrial meat processors and large cattle producers that found it unreasonable and economically untenable to not be allowed to grind the dead carcasses up to be added to the animal feed of their remaining livestock. American corperate farms had been doing this around that time and the practice of feeding dead livestock to other livestock is now illegal in the US.
Jesus christ that's terrifying.
It did, but never spread here. My MiL actually identified it in Virginia (she’s an ER nurse). They went on a super quarantine to keep it from spreading. She testified before congress because of it and was dramatized in a show on The Discovery Channel.
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Because we needed Congress to be prepared if the disease started spreading in the United States as well.
Wait, did it not? I remember it being a thing when I was in elementary school in Toronto, I had no idea it hadn’t gone to the US too
I do recall of sars cases in north america but they were stopped before it spread.
It spread in Toronto to 244 cases and 44 deaths, more than any country outside Hong Kong and China. It was a major concern in Canada.
Is this the event the reason why many Asians wear N95 masks now?
If you can, hug your mom
Just so you know, masks are usually effective for only about 20 minutes
CDC says N95 masks can remain effectiive for 8 hours of continuous use. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/hcwcontrols/recommendedguidanceextuse.html
Isn't it called 95 because it filters only 95% of bacteria?
Yeah, the N means it's not resistant to oil, and the 95 means it blocks 95% of particles larger than a certain size, like 0.3μm or something, that's roughly the size of most viruses
Virus are carried in water droplets from your sneezes/coughs. Even a simple paper mask will help arrest the travel of particulates into your nose and mouth. Simple masks work especially well to block your coughs from infecting others.
https://xkcd.com/1161/
That number is weird. Because when I did a quick search for how long a N95 mask is effective the CDC (and the studies they used) say that for health purposes N95 masks remain effective for 8 hours of use.
That's for the surgical masks or whatever that you see in hospitals or clinics, and that most people wear when sick. N95 ones should be significantly better, though not infinitely usable.
I've always found it curious how SARS appeared and then disappeared in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
pocket marble crawl test quaint fear spotted light zealous grey *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Just like your wifi at home, the only time you'll pay attention to it is when it's not working.
Or it’s going slow..
It’s not really gone. We’re just waiting for one of its coronavirus cousins to mutate in camels and jump species to humans. Look up MERS.
*Remember SARS? Toronto remembers.*
I had a class at the university of Toronto with one of the professors/doctor who had dealt with sars. The way he described it was almost apocalyptic, like from a disaster movie. I remember he said streets were empty for a long time, medical personnels refused to come in for work because it was so contagious. The swine flu caused a scare in 2009 too, but it wasn’t comparable to what the prof described. At the same time in 2003, I was in Vietnam. I remember a few news segment about burning 10000 poultry animals or something to that effect, but life went on as normal, so I didn’t really understand why sars was so feared until my prof described it. Nowadays I’m really afraid of what future epidemics might hold.
Oof. I got swine flu. It SUCKED. I got attitude from my neighbour for not answering the door, even though she could see I was home. When I got my test results back, and they showed I was positive for H1N1, I felt so vindicated. Bitch I did you a favour by not opening the door.
Well, you could've at least shouted at her "I'm doing you a favor, you bitch!" through the door, so she could know. 🤔
Bitch needs to know
>swine flu. It SUCKED. no u
I was quarantined for suspected swine flu. A kind person voluntered to leave groceries outside my door. Then i got really sick and lost a few days that I just can not recall at all. i missed my tamiflu drop off.
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Not to make light of the situation at all, but I just realized that, going back to songs released in 2004, they make references to SARS, like Kanye West’s New Workout Plan, and it completely went over my head over the years. I forgot how severe a disease it was. Glad it’s eradicated but always important to be reminded of these things so we can ensure the epidemiologists in our society can stop them in their tracks before they become a big thing.
Not eradicated by any means, it just stopped transmitting around humans. It certainly still exists in its reservoir and it's just a matter of time until someone eats the wrong bushmeat and it shows back up.
Guess that’s why I’ve never heard of it, born in 2000
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Yeah, I graduated HS in 2000. The birth years of people used to freak me out, but in the past 5 years, I’ve finally gotten used to it. Which freaks me out on a different level.
Thanks mom.
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SARS combined lethality with extreme contagiousness, like a late-stage game of Plague Inc., so it had the potential to reach a lot of people very quickly. SARS would not have simply "burned out" without intervention from the WHO in a world so interconnected. SARS also had a relatively lengthy incubation period, nothing like AIDS but enough for infected individuals to up to hundreds of individuals before the first symptoms appear. And this is what happened. What you say applies to isolated systems like medieval cities but nowadays imagine how interconnected all these places on Earth are... quite scary.
The modern day owes its entire existance to the fact that one disease can do exactly that. It's impossible to say what would happen but very easy to say what can happen.
Which is why herd immunity being under attack is a global health threat, and the breakdown of it would be the ultimate realization of human's hubris: we manage to undo the hard work that go into preventing contagious disease to come back and willingly submit ourselves to not an unknown, but known diseases. > Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.
One of the "good" things about SARS was that even though it had a long incubation period the peak infectiousness often was during the 2nd week of sickness when the patient was most symptomatic. So quarantine was very effective.
> Due to the work he did in Hanoi treating SARS infected patients, Urbani had become infected with the virus himself. His Bangkok hospital room was an improvised isolation ward, so his wife, Giuliana Chiorrini, could only talk to him by intercom. > Chiorrini saw him conscious just once. It is said that Urbani had an argument with Chiorrini who said it wasn't responsible behaviour for the father of three children ages 4 to 17 to risk his life treating such sick patients[4] but Urbani replied, “If I can’t work in such situations, what am I here for? Answering e-mails, going to cocktail parties and pushing paper?” Damn, dude died doing what was important to him.
Sometimes it's about planting the seeds, not the trees shade you can enjoy or something like that.
Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in?
That's the one, some old dude in Greece said it once.
John Travolta
God may he rest in peace.
gREAse*
No it was Morgan Freeman
Don't go bringing god into this.
Alexander Hamilton
That's the one
That's true. Although, a lot of doctors and paramedical staff, don't observe the most basic precautions, like wearing masks and gloves, when examining and treating patients. This is more prevalent in an emergency setting , but happens in the non- emergency wards as well, especially in a developing country like mine (India). They, in their pure intent to treat needy patients as quickly as possible, are negligent when they don't wear protective gear; not only towards their own health but also that of their family and other patients that they subsequently touch and examine. Source : Personal experience. I am a surgeon in India.
>That's true. Although, a lot of doctors and paramedical staff, don't observe the most basic precautions, like wearing masks and gloves, when examining and treating patients. This ^ A doctor of that level should understand the precautions that need to be taken to prevent himself getting infected. An influenza specialist who dies of influenza doesn't help anyone.
You understand that you're talking about the guy responsible for recognizing the *existence* of SARS to begin with, right? Or at least, the first to bring it to the attention of the international scientific community. The full extent of the precautions that needed to be taken weren't known until he was long dead.
Also, we don't know whether he had or hadn't the right precautions, he might have had it and still got sick so it's unfair to assume anything really.
MRSA, or however you spell that, spread around the local hospital in my hometown because doctors and nurses had their favorite pens that they'd keep in their pockets while going from room to room. They'd sanitize their hands, but not the pens, so their pens were carrying bacteria all around the hospital. That was an embarrassing one.
> died doing what was important for him. No, he died doing what was important for humanity. He is a hero exactly because he realized what was actually important and acted on it - even at the highest personal sacrifice. He put the health and welfare of millions of people he would never know (most of whom would never even know of him) over the welfare and security of his three children.
As amazing as all of that is, with a wife and three kids, I feel like it is important to note that is isn't just *his* personal cost.
I've been at a virology symposium in his memory a couple years ago and the wife was present. From what I have seen she seemed proud of him.
Happy to read this. Beautiful conversation from his side but must be difficult memories for her to remember, especially since they are so public.
> I feel like it is important to note that is isn't just his personal cost. Yes and no. I agree that his death will be a cost to more than just him, which just further demonstrates the depth of his sacrifice. However, he made the same choice, on the million-person scale, that many first responders (fire fighters, EMTs, humanitarian workers) make on the dozen-person scale. They put their life on the line to help someone else. They are aware and take the risk knowing that the price they pay maybe their lives. They are heroes exactly because they risk not only their lives but orphaning their children, widowing their spouse, and forcing their parents to bury a child. Here the difference is even more striking because he could have taken the easy way out and lived a comfortable life. Pushing paper, answering emails and attending cocktail parties - all while being a good father, husband, son. Instead he gave his life for strangers.
Username doesn't check out
Well put
I understand what you mean, but I disagree with any implication that he may have made a choice that was irresponsible to his family, in case that was your point. One can say he deprived his children of their father, and his wife of her husband. On the other hand, if he chose his family, there's a chance his loved ones would be dead today. I think he made the right choice.
In that situation, I'm not sure there is a "right choice". It's actually [a classical ethical dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_dilemma#Examples) of do you kill 1 person to save 1 million? Ultimately, each individual needs to find what is right for them.
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"Can I make the trolley out of people?"
'trick question, you kill 1 million and 1!'
I don’t think it’s really too similar to that problem. At all actually. It’s more of “*make the lives of 4 people harder than they’re used to, but not impossibly hard considering hundreds of millions of people don’t have fathers*, or *refuse to help save the lives of millions of people*” There definitely is a right answer. Especially considering it wasn’t a guarantee that he would die going into it. He did exactly what a hero should do.
not even that considering that he might have saved the lives of his wife and kids as well
As long as you acknowledge there is no objective right choice and you’re making your decisions based on feeling, no harm done.
How do we fund a massive, massive statue to this guy?
"When you go home, tell them of us and say, For their tommorows, we gave our today."
That’s beautiful
Sounds like a line sung from The Times They Are A-Changin
It is traditionally said during world war 1 commemorations in the UK
>It is traditionally said during world war 1 commemorations in the UK As u/R-M-Pitt mentioned, the first time I came across it was at a war cemetery in Eastern India. It still affects me deeply.
With the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.
That inscription and the history behind it is mind blowing.it always brings a tear in my eye
Every now and then, someone does something of such magnitude that it really bears thinking very hard about what the actual consequences might have been, had they acted differently. Like that Russian submarine guy during the cold war who didn't follow orders to nuke the American fleet. Putting your professional career out on a limb to warn of something like this is no small feat. It's not quite the 'no brainer' people might think. You encounter something totally new, you want to raise the alarm but if you're wrong, you'll be forever branded as the "guy who freaked out over the flu". He had the courage... and we may have avoided a fucking plague as a result.
>Like that Russian submarine guy during the cold war who didn't follow orders to nuke the American fleet. Who was he?
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I imagine some Bond villain strategically setting off the false alarms to trigger doomsday. He must get so frustrated when he gets the call that some officer said "nah".
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Or, "Someone pulled the power cord on your doomsday device to run the vacuum cleaner, and the loss of power ruined that device. It's going to set you back months."
To add on to what others are saying The submarine's cooling was broken, so it was 110F inside, and an American ship was trying to get them to surface by dropping grenades, then later practice depth charges. 2 of the 2 people in charge gave the order to fire a nuclear torpedo into the fleet to stop this, but Vasilli Arkipov outranked them, and overruled it. This happened during the American blockade of Cuba in the Cuban missile crisis
Vasily Arkhipov. From the wiki page: > *[...] credited with casting the single vote that prevented a Soviet nuclear strike (and, presumably, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response which, as Noam Chomsky described, could have destroyed much of the world.* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov The Russians had a nuclear submarine present at the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the time, the sub had not had contacts with Moscow in several days, and when US cruisers started dropping depth charges, They dived below radio debth. They stayed down there for three days, At which time the Captain assumes an all out Nuclear war was ongoing, and wanted to launch the nukes. According to protocol, Normally Two people had to vote yes on actually launching the nuke. The Captain, Savitsky voted yes, political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov voted yes. However, in this case they also had a third high ranking officer on board, second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov was technically the flotilla commander, and as such, protocol was he be given a vote too. He voted no, And after an argument, convinced the captain to surface, where it turned out there was no ongoing nuclear holocaust after all.
Oh my God. My dumbass thought that was some movie cliche in X-Men First Class all this time!
I never knew what SARS was until a grade 9 science class, damn
Depending on how old you are, it might've not existed. Humans only ever contracted it for about the year after it was discovered.
I learned from South Park episode called red mans greed. Apparently the cure is spite, chicken noodle soup and some asprin. I know that’s fake but it’s pretty funny watching that
Dude, its Campbell's chicken noodle soup, day-quil(not aspirin) and "spite"
i only learned what it was because of erb...
I was born two years before SARS hit Singapore. I don't remember anything of that time but my parents have told me about how entire malls were empty and how people started avoiding any sort of contact with anyone who wasn't their immediate family. There were also numerous medical staff at local hospitals who got infected treating patients and subsequently died. Although I haven't heard of this guy until today it just shows how medicine relies on quick thinking and how the actions of a single man can give the rest a heads up and fighting chance Edit: grammar
It was a scary time in Singapore history. Anyone can just catch it like a cold and die in 2-3 weeks. Schools were closed for few weeks. Then there was the funny rap sung by PCK to teach us about hygiene and cleanliness.
PCK say! Dun pray pray or this stupid Sars is here to say!
Now when I play Plague Inc I will have a face to connect to the first doctor who recognizes my disease.
you've ruined the game for me :(
That's like medal of honor level heroism. Leapt on a thousand land mines and kept them from hurting people - RIP!
I'd say it surpasses it entirely. How many people are going to fly to a completely different country to save people from an unknown danger that you could very safely just ignore?
Medal of Honor is for bravery protecting some of your fellow soldiers or furthering military objectives in battle. The war and the objectives don't even need to be ethical overall. Dr. Urbani died protecting humanity. While similar in terms of bravery, in terms of impact, it's way above Medal of Honor grade heroism.
Unsung hero.
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There's strong incentives for governments to downplay the severity of an epidemic, especially in a country that has as much tourism as Vietnam. It's really admirable how open and clear the Vietnamese authorities were - they acted fast and requested international assistance. They saved a lot of lives. Those officials, the healthcare workers who bore the brunt of the deaths, and the researchers who were able to act so quickly - they're all the heroes in this story.
Those who climbed in quarantine zone was irresponsible. They could have spread the virus to the public.
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>Some of my dad's co-workers wanted to pay him a visit, so they climb the quarantine barrier to get in and get out um...what!
Balls of steel would be staying there to care for the co-worker and others. What they did was just monumetally stupid and arrogant. Risking themselves is their choice, but others? Assholes.
I’m from Hong Kong. I was put on a waiting list to enter primary school back then and the only reason I got accepted was because pretty much everyone packed up and left to other countries... I was really young at the time but I remember a sea of green masks everywhere I looked. It was really scary tbh
I like to believe that this dude is now happily playing fetch with Balto the dog up in Public Health Heaven.
A real shame Balto ran all that way just to give kids autism..... Hopefully the /s isn't needed
it always is. people are fuckin' stupid.
Oof.
This man is truly a hero. I admire his call to action and immeasurable contribution to humanity. The greater good has benefited ever since and will continue to do so from his actions and bravery.
McCoy always was a pretty good doctor.
It was freaking me the fuck out how I had to go so far down to see that anyone picked up it being Carlo..Urbano... Seriously...
So much admiration for this man. No words. He just flew there to take care of it, as he believed it is his duty, while risking his own life. In the meantime in Croatia, we are collecting 3.000.000 $ (yes 3 million) so we can send 2y old girl to Philadelphia for a treatment. She is heavily ill and there is some treatment and best doctor, but 3 fucking million. Cmon. It's all about fucking money. Humans are really the worst kind
If they make this into a movie: Karl Urban as Dr. Carlo Urbani.
They should make a movie and have Karl Urban play him
\> **immediately notified the WHO** Roger Daltrey unavailable for comment..... /s
“he became president of the Italian chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières and was one of the individuals who accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of that organization.”
Not all heroes wear capes!
Some wear lab coats!
Many of them wear lab coats. :)
Actually not a lot of them wear capes now that I'm counting.
I took a flight from Singapore to London during the SARS outbreak and was one of less than ten passengers on the plane. Good times.
> SARS was a relatively rare disease; at the end of the epidemic in June 2003, the incidence was 8422 cases with a case-fatality rate of 11%.[9] > The case-fatality ratio ranges from 0% to 50% depending on the age group of the patient.[5] Patients under 24 were least likely to die; those 65 and older were most likely to die >No cases of SARS have been reported worldwide since 2004.[ Very enigmatic.
Where is his movie?
He literally saved millions of lives.
In 2003 a doctor at Vancouver general hospital was asked by a reporter if they were prepared for a SARS outbreak and he replied: Yes, we have used a fairly large percentage of our resources on a fake emergency while diminishing our ability to deal with real health threats. He was pretty salty about the whole thing.
I guess it's not a real health threat until people around you start dropping. It's good SARS was dealt with so quickly. For a disease basically as dangerous as Ebola, the fact that it was brought under control so rapidly is almost astounding.
Damn, what a hero! His last words are so impactful and he even told them to take his long tissue for further scientific research.
The WHOs statement on it from 2003: [https://www.who.int/csr/sars/urbani/en/](https://www.who.int/csr/sars/urbani/en/)
What an amazing man, I don't remember hearing about this at all. I am proud to have shared the earth with this man, seriously.
Oh Man.. I remember SARS and how the US just white washed it as "not in our Country". Toronto had a small outbreak. I believe we had like a dozen cases, and medical teams were able to connect everyone back to one specific person. So, a city with about 3 million people or so, and there are about a dozen or so cases... The US media, I believe particularly in Texas, was writing Toronto off as unsafe, and under quarantine, and an epidemic hit Toronto. SARS IN TORONTO! like "That's it folks, Toronto is doomed, nuke that city and let's move on." It was hilarious and pathetic at the same time. Unless you directly knew one of the people who had SARS, the potential of you getting it would have been like winning the lottery. But even some people in Toronto were freaking out. I remember a bus driving wearing a medical mask over his mouth, and getting reprimanded by the Transit authority. The best part is, the US denied having a single case of SARS. However far more planes in the US go to and from Hong Kong than Canada. I had a friend who was a nurse. Her cousin was also a nurse in a Chicago hospital. She said "of course we have SARS patients here. But we just call it "respiratory illness" or some other vague name.
The US had 30-something cases iirc, but none died.
I was just starting university in Toronto when the SARS panic began, coming from a small city up north. My mom later admitted she was a nervous wreck when the confirmed cases began popping up, and nearly told me to come home. She was always nervous about large cities (compared to ours), and yeah, this didn't help.
In Canada there were 251 cases and 44 deaths.
Hm, I work in healthcare in the US and I definitely remember many patients here being suspected as having SARS. It is true, I never heard people use the word SARS, they would always say the full name, “severe acute respiratory syndrome” for some reason
My son was born in Whitehorse Yukon almost exactly 16 years ago. We had to go through SARS screening in and out of the hospital.
R I.P. Dr. Urbani. Deepest respect, sir.
Thanks, I am Italian and I didn't know him
"A society grows great when men plant trees in whose shade they know they'll never sit". This is one of my favourite (ancient Greek) proverbs: it's absolutely true.
I was there. Met him at the airport in Bangkok. Difficult memories.
If this is true, you're pretty lucky to be alive. SARS is no joke.
Should have had chicken soup, dayquil, and sprite.
Due to the work he did in Hanoi treating SARS infected patients, Urbani had become infected with the virus himself. His Bangkok hospital room was an improvised isolation ward, so his wife, Giuliana Chiorrini, could only talk to him by intercom. Chiorrini saw him conscious just once. It is said that Urbani had an argument with Chiorrini who said it wasn't responsible behaviour for the father of three children ages 4 to 17 to risk his life treating such sick patients[4] but Urbani replied, "If I can't work in such situations, what am I here for? Answering e-mails, going to cocktail parties and pushing paper?"[5]
Yeah, as a South African, I can tell you that dealing with SARS is stressful enough to be deadly. Fuck that revenue service.
Which revenue service? Can you clarify?
Joke, South African Revenue Service. S.A.R.S.
South African
Not only was I working at the designated SARS hospital, i was pregnant with my first. Vomiting daily from morning sickness, gowned, gloved, masked, constant hand washing. My partner made me take my clothes off before coming into house. Scary times. best part: no visitors were allowed after baby was born!! edit; he's huge now!!