Dear Lesliesong and others interested,
Our dear friend Feierjanes wrote a month or two ago about the danger of SARS.She wrote here as a physician who knows what she is talking about. It would be a good idea for us to look back at her posts and see what she told us then. :-)
This is what I have learned from the media about how to try to avoid catching SARS.
Don't hug or kiss. Don't shake hands. Smile or wave instead.
Use alcohol jell cleanser to clean your hands when you are out and around, or else use soap and good warm water and wash hands for twenty seconds. Wash hands often. Do not touch your face, as it can infect through the eyes, nose and mouth. It is very contagious. A way it is passed is droplets in the air from others talking, breathing, coughing and sneezing. The virus can infect through urine, stool, and any body fluid. Avoid places outside where people urinate, and where they spit in the street, whenever possible. Washing hands well and often is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Always wash your hands immediately when you return home after being out.
It is not known yet how long the SARS virus can live on a hard surface. For a little while they thought they knew, but now they are not sure, again. There are many puzzles about SARS.
Stay away from crowds of any kind. People have easily caught it at three funerals and at a big church event where 500 people had to be quarantined. Also, try to stay away from visiting hospitals or doctors's offices, unless you have to.
Don't share food from a common dish. Put food on your own clean plate from freshly prepared food, and then only you should eat from your dish. Other people should not take food from any plate you eat from with their sticks, as you can get some of their saliva when they do, and catch SARS. Use clean utensils to eat.
Stay away from people who cough. The symptoms of SARS are a fever of 38 C. a sick feeling. Headache. Cough. Difficulty breathing. Here, when people have any one of these symptoms they are asked to stay home in quarantine for twelve days, and not to come to work or go anywhere until that time has passed and they are still well.
About 4 to 5 per cent of the people who get SARS die from it. Some others are left with continuing troubles, and then there are those who recover readily within the time expected and become well again. It seems that for some reason there are those who are extra contagious, and easily infect everybody who comes within 1 metre of them. That is what happened in the beginning when an sick physician infected all the people who rode in a hotel elevator with him. --INFORMATION PUT TOGETHER BY THE TORONTO STAR NEWSPAPER--
Only 25 per cent of SARS victims develop pneumonia - the rest suffer only fever and cold symptoms.
SARS victims have 95-98 per cent chance of recovery.
Common pneumonia kills at a much higher rate than SARS - up to 50 per cent when it is spread amongst the ill or elderly at hospitals. ********
There was an apartment building in which people who had never met infected each other. This is because there was a poor job done when building in making sure the toilet water and the regular wash water lines did not trade water. There were floor drains, and one person with SARS had diarhea, so when the contaminated water was in the floor drains of other apartments, (maybe it came up a little onto their floor and they walked in it, I don't know), but it caused the people in other apartments to become ill with SARS. They are checking every case now, anywhere in the world, to try to find out how each person got it, so they can learn about it and how we can begin to protect ourselves from it.
If you have to take care of someone who is ill with SARS, wear goggles to protect your eyes, a particularly good mask which is recommended for physicians, and disposable gloves. The usual masks for dust and so on are not enough protection, nor is covering your face with a handkerchief or your scarf or your hand. Also wear a gown like a nurse. Be careful how you handle these things when you take them off. You need to treat them with alcohol or throw them away, wash your hands very well, and take new ones the next time.
There will soon be a test to find out which people have it for sure. That will be a great help to the medical profession. Then it will be easier to sort the SARS cases from people with similar symptoms from some other cause.
In the beginning they thought that SARS killed people who had some other chronic illness or were elderly. Now it has killed children and people with no chronicillnesses, who were 30 - 40 years old, as well as a man 99, and others of many ages. It is a developing illness. Although there is much hope from the information collected by the Toronto Star, it is still a dangerous illness and should be avoided at all costs.
It will take longer to get a vaccine that it has to get the test. Perhaps it will take six months, or even up to five years. A vaccine may not even be possible because the Corona virus constantly mutates, as colds and flu do. It may mutate to a worse version, or it may mutate to become milder. It is possible that it will join colds and flu and we will always have it around and have to take precautions against it. That is, that it will become endemic.
In Canada the strain is a worse one than the one they have at present in the United States, which is not killing people there at all. In some places it kills, and in some places it is milder. Nobody knows why, yet. There are very many things that are not yet known about this illness. It is a totally new disease in the world, just as AIDS and Ebola were when they arrived. Flu is an old disease. This is not like Flu, it is a totally new disease.
Remember, of all the billions of people in the world there are only a few thousand cases at present. Those numbers are steadily increasing, and each of us can help to keep the numbers down, and ourselves and others from catching it by obeying the quarantine instructions and the prevention methods.
It is important to remember that it is still more likely that you will be killed in a car accident, than by catching SARS. Nevertheless, it is important to keep up your precautions so that the odds don't get worse all the time.
Keep yourself well informed, but it will do no good to you or anyone else if you get into a panic. It is important to be philosophical about it and take the precautions, but not to get too upset, because that can cause you to have stress problems which will need medical attention. In some places people are getting too stressed out already.
I think to myself that if I get it I will at least die quickly, and not slowly with a very long and yucky illness. I also think about the odds that I mentioned. These things help to keep one calm. It is also not a good thing to read about it and follow it in every news cast. Once a day you could check a few web sites that you know give you the best information. People found the same thing about the war in Iraq. They could not bear up under constant news and news watching on tv. Don't do it to yourselves.
People who have been in contact with a person with SARS should quarantine themselves for twelve days to see if they get it. Travellers don't know if they have been in contact with someone who is getting it, so they also must quarantine themselves when they arrive. By quarantining they keep their loved ones safe, and also keep SARS from spreading out into the community and infecting people at large.
This is what you should do if you travel: when you arrive you need to stay by yourself in quarantine, with no contact with your family for twelve days. They can leave food for you and go away without talking with you, and you shouldn't give them anything you have for them until you know you don't have SARS at the end of the twelve days. If you didn't get it within the twelve days of quarantine you were not infected this time, and you can join your family and friends safely without danger of infecting them.
The way the health authorities in Canada are trying to contain it from spreadinginto the community is by quarantining for twelve days after contact, everyone who has been in the presense of a person who has SARS. They also trace back every case of SARS to the original one who had it in this country, because if they can't trace it back then it has gotten out into the community and there can be a local epidemic.
So far, most quarantining here is voluntary, but this may change, and people maybe monitored with bracelet monitors that report if they leave their homes. They are also considering placarding quarantined houses, as was done when I was a child, for the dangerous communicable diseases such as Whooping Cough, Diphtherio, Polio, and others.
SARS spreads very much like a cold or the flu, except that all body fluids are involved and it seems to be even more easily caught.
That is what I know about it so far. I look forward to hearing from our physicians here on the forum. :-)
Best wishes and good health Lesliesong, and all of you! :-)
Warm greetings to each, Mary
