There can't be very many people who haven't heard of the SARS (Severe Accute Respiratory Syndrome) Virus by now. A lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) seems to swirling round regarding SARS.
Reading the media reports, you might get the impression you'll keel over and die should you go near Canada, China, Hong Kong or Taiwan.
It certainly appears to be the case that as a race, humans have a severe inability to tailor their anxiety to the reality of the danger. Familiar dangers are much more readily accepted, whatever their size, than new ones, however remote.
You don't refuse to travel in cars because you have a one percent lifetime risk of dying in one. You have a 1 in 3 chance of being diagnosed with cancer at some point in your lifetime, but how many people stop smoking, change their dietary habits, stop going out in the sun, reduce their drinking, etc., to try and reduce that risk?
Dramatic dangers are more feared than insidious ones, even if it is the insidious ones that will put paid to most of us in the end.
The SARS virus kills about five percent of those who contract it. Moreover, it does not seem to be highly contagious, so that, even in those cities in which there have been cases, only a minority will actually contract it.
Of those five percent of fatal cases, a majority have been amongst people who are afflicted or debilitated by chronic disease. Not much consolation for those so afflicted, but it does mean that the end of the human race is not going to be caused by a little pneumonia like virus from China.
There is a popular superstition that once the cause of a disease is found, it is virtually defeated. This is not so, diseases whose cause has been known for decades have continued incurable, while other diseases have been controlled, if not eliminated before their causes were known.
So, what diseases are there around these days that seem to strike no fear in the average individual, despite being deadly?
Hrm... how about Malaria, which kills about ten times as many people a day as SARS has killed in total?
As a yearly figure, it is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.7 MILLION DEATHS a year.
As usual, a little common sense and slightly less hysteria (on the part of the press mostly) will go a long way.
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