Respiratory Syndrome Sparking Alarm

An unexplained and very harsh form of pneumonia is spreading in Hong Kong and has been detected elsewhere. I found an AP story on the topic this morning, and since then there have been more stories. They're calling it "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome," which roughly translates to "Something unexplained that happens to the respiratory system on a nonpermanent basis," because they don't know what causes it.

Reuters, via Yahoo.

AP's Emma Ross, via Yahoo. "Mystery Outbreak May Be New Strain of Flu":

"If it really is the flu, it could be we have a new organism that could cause a pandemic," said Dr. R. Bradley Sack, director of Johns Hopkins' international travel clinic. "People immediately start thinking of 1917," the year a worldwide flu epidemic killed at least 20 million people.

Experts discounted the possibility that terrorism is the source and believe it almost certainly is a contagious infection that spreads most easily from victims to their doctors, nurses and families through coughing, sneezing and other contact with nasal fluids.

Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing) blogged this e-mail that ran on Dave Farber's Interesting People" list.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have put up a webpage that collects CDC resources on the outbreak.

We are, of course, still talking about a relatively small outbreak in terms of people presently directly affected. On the other hand, it seems to be a very virulent and harsh illness. I hope that the medical community's relatively early detection of the outbreak will at least somewhat soften the blow that this illness threatens.